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ORIENTAL AND LINGUISTIC STUDIES. 


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SECOND ‘SERIES. 


| BY THE SAME AUTHOR: 
LANGUAGE, AND THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE. 


TWELVE LECTURES ON THE PRINCIPLES OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE. 
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WILLIAM DWIGHT WHITNEY, ~~~ 


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NEW YORK: 
SCRIBNER, ARMSTRONG, AND COMPANY, 
1874. 


* 


Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by 
ScrIBNER, ARMSTRONG, AND COMPANY, 
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 


RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE: 
STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY 
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‘10 
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MY EARLY TEACHERS AND LIFELONG FRIENDS, 
THIS VOLUME 


IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED. 


yn ere 


t 
ey He ery 2 


i 


4 


PREFACE. 


I-put forth this second volume of essays on subjects 
connected with language and with the Orient, in com- 
pliance with a conditional promise given two years ago, 
at the end of the Preface to the first volume. The 
condition, ‘if the reception accorded to its predecessor 
were sufficiently encouraging,” has been at least meas- 
urably fulfilled ; I have no right to complain of the way 
in which the somewhat doubtful venture has been met, 
both by the general public and by the narrower and 
more critical community of scholars. The intrinsic and 
widely felt interest of the themes treated has been 
enough to insure a welcome to even such imperfect at- 
tempts at their earnest discussion. I hope that the same 
fortune may attend this continuation of the series. 

It is also in strict adherence to the terms of my 
promise, that the essays here published are throughout 
on other classes of subjects than those before treated. 
I have even excluded any further discussions of the 
foundation and methods of linguistic study —the matter 
which I had most at heart in the making up of the 
former volume. I might have felt called upon to do 
differently in this regard, if there had appeared in the 
interval anything which demanded notice as placing the 
subject in a new light; or, especially, any serious at- 


etn toe PREFACE. 


tempt to controvert my views and the reasonings by 
which they were sustained. But that is not the case; 
though the essays have provoked in one or two quar- 
ters a certain amount of vituperation, they have not 
been met on their own ground, of fact and argument; 
and I believe that I am not mistaken in claiming that 
their general theory of language and of the method of 
its study has been and is steadily gaining ground among 
scholars. 

Most of the articles composing the volume are repro- 
duced here nearly as when first issued,! with only a 
careful revisal. To the first, however, I have made 
an addition, obviously called for; and to the fourth 
(on Miiller’s “ Chips’) I have appended a brief no- 
tice of other later works of the same author, chiefly 
made up from criticisms furnished at the time to the 
columns of the “ Nation” (New York). But the eighth, 
ninth, eleventh, and twelfth articles are entirely rewrit- 
ten, though including more or less matter already pub- 
lished. The eighth is almost wholly new, except as 
many of its views and descriptions are nearly identical 
with those given in two-articles on the Standard Al- 
phabet of Professor Lepsius, in the seventh and eighth 
volumes of the Journal of the American Oriental So- 
ciety. The ninth is founded in good measure on an 
appendix to the latter of the articles just mentioned.? 
The eleventh in like manner has for its basis a paper 

1 A statement of the times and places of original publication will be found, as 
before, at the end of the volume. 

2 The concluding subject of the eighth, and the main argument of the ninth, 


were communicated to the Am. Philol. Association in July last, and abstracts 
are published in the Proceedings of the Association at that meeting. 


PREFACE. 1x 


in the Transactions of the American Philological Asso- 
ciation for 1870, and it contains elements from other 
articles quoted or referred to in its notes. The subjects 
compendiously discussed, finally, in the twelfth have been 
for the most part treated in greater detail in the notes to 
the Sarya-Siddhanta, in two articles in the eighth volume 
of the Journal of the American Oriental Society, in an- 
other in the first volume (new series) of the Journal of 
the Royal Asiatic Society (London), and in a note to 
Cowell’s new edition of Colebrooke’s Essays (vol. i., p. 
126 seqg.). The added illustrative chart is from the 
Sfirya-SiddhAnta. , 
New HAvEn, Conn., October, 1874. 


af 


CONTENTS. 


——~— 


I. Tur BririsH 1n INDIA. ‘ ; “ A = ¢ = = - 


II. CuinA AND THE CHINESE é . ¢ “ s ‘ ; i Oe 


III. CuHtnA AND THE WEST ; * : ; s ‘ ‘ 91 
IV. MULuEr’s Cuties From A GERMAN WORKSHOP . ° - - 126 
V. Cox’s AryAN MYTHOLOGY . ‘ : ; A ; P : 149 


VI. ALFrorD’s QUEEN’s ENGLISH .« : : 2 ° é : . 166 


VII. How sHALL WE SPELL? . ; . . ous . : 181 
VIII. Tue ELEMENTS or ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION . . . - 202 
IX. Tue RELATION oF VoWEL AND CONSONANT . . . : 277 
X. BEtw’s VISIBLE SPEECH . : r ° . ° ° . . 3801 
XI. On THE ACCENT IN SANSKRIT . : : : f ; : 318 


XII. On rue Lunar Zoprac or Inp1A, ARABIA, AND CHINA . . 3841 


INDEX . F ‘ 5 ‘ : ; : ‘ : - ‘ 423 


I. 
THE BRITISH IN INDIA. 


——_@—- 


A GREAT misfortune, or a signal judgment, has befallen 
the British dominion in India! For many years past 
indistinctly foreseen — perhaps rather, dimly augured and 
dreaded — the storm has burst forth at last with a sudden- 
ness and a fury which have taken by surprise its victims, 
England, and the world. The great native army, so long 
the sword and shield of English authority in her Eastern 
possessions, the pride of her policy, the reliance of her 
governors, has dissolved and deserted her ; nay, much worse 
than that, has turned upon her with the ferocity of a wild 
beast long thought tamed, but which has only suppressed 
its brutal instincts in order to sate them more horribly 
when its keeper is thrown off his guard. Throughout a 
region more extensive than England itself, the English, a 
few months ago the rulers and masters, are now mangled 
and dishonored corpses, or hunted fugitives, or fighting 
for their own and one another’s lives. Even this is not 
the worst; those who administer the affairs of a con- 
quered people, we know, must carry their lives as in their 
hand, exposed to sudden outbursts of the subjected ; but 
here the hand of vengeance has not struck only at the 
instruments of alien dominion; their innocent families 
have been butchered under circumstances the most horri- 
ble; gentle women and tender children have been done 

1 This was written early in 1858, when the work of crushing the mutiny was 


_ well advanced toward completion. 
1 


ce THE BRITISH IN INDIA. 


to death with a refinement of hideous cruelty of which 
only North American Indians, or South Sea cannibals, 
would have been thought capable. All England is mourn- 
ing her dead. All England is roused to take vengeance 
on the murderers, to vindicate her sullied honor, to re- 
establish her profaned authority ; and, what is much bet- 
ter, the public opinion of England, long too little regardful 
of her Eastern empire, has been cruelly but effectually 
awakened to its relations to her, to her duties toward it ; 
she is asking what she has done to draw upon herself this 
calamity, what she has to do to render impossible its re- 
currence. Meanwhile the whole world looks on with in- 
tense interest, to see what the result will be, for England 
and for India, its sympathies strongly pronounced in 
favor of the one side or the other, or balancing between 
the two combatants, uncertain with whom lies the greater 
share of wrong. 

The parties engaged in the struggle, its scene, the 
stake depending on it, lend it a surpassing significance. 
England, on the one hand, is the great representative of 
the progressive tendencies of modern culture, the fore- 
most civilizing and Christianizing power, which is doing 
more than any other to bind together the nations of the 
earth in one bond of brotherhood by community of inter- 
ests and institutions. India, on the other hand, consti- 
tuting by reason of its immensity, its natural resources, 
and its isolation from the rest of Asia, a continent by 
itself, always sustaining a population more numerous than 
that of Africa and both the Americas taken together, 
and rich in productions sought of all the world, has been, 
since the beginning of intercourse among men, a mark 
for ever increasing attention. From the time when 
Solomon’s navies visited its Ophir,! and dim rumors of 
the ‘Ethiopians of the sunrise” reached the ears of 


«1 Lassen’s identification of Ophir with the western coast of India is not, to be 
sure, beyond question. 


THE BRITISH IN INDIA. 8 


Homer, when Alexander was forced by his mutinous 
army back from its frontier, when Greek and barbarian 
kings contended for the possession of its western prov- 
inces, when the cravings of Roman luxury were supplied 
from its marts, when its wealth and helplessness made it 
the prey of Mohammedan rapacity, till at last European 
nations strove for its possession, and it became the de- 
pendency of a little islet in the far-off western ocean, how 
rich in varying phases and wide-reaching relations is the 
history of India! Within the present century, too, a 
new interest has been added to it. Fifty years ago the 
world hardly knew that India was the seat of a civiliza- 
tion older than that of Greece and Rome, the cradle of 
institutions which had spread themselves over two thirds 
of Asia, the birthplace of a literature not less extensive 
and varied than the classical; and that the race which 
had made the country their home, and wrought these 
works there, was of near kindred with our own, that its 
earliest recorded conditions were those of our own ances- 
tors, that its ancient language was the key to all the lan- 
guages of Europe, the key to all linguistic study. The 
knowledge of these facts has made the concerns of India 
nearer and dearer to every enlightened mind, has placed 
her under the more especial protection of the whole civ- 
ilized world, and has made it the duty of all to watch 
that she be not treated with calculating selfishness, or 
with greedy rapacity, as a prey in the hand of the 
spoiler, but with the consideration, and the true regard 
to her welfare and progress, which such a history com- 
mands. We ourselves, as Americans, have those es- 
pecial responsibilities in this matter which flow from 
our especial relations to England, as nearest akin with 
her in language, institutions, and interests, and as exer- 
cising by our public opinion an appreciable influence on 
hers. It is important, then, that we fully understand and 
rightly judge all the questions involved in the relations 


4. . THE BRITISH IN INDIA. 


subsisting between England and India; particularly at 
such a time as this, when in every one’s mind are starting 
the inquiries: by what tenure do the British hold India ? 
what is their right there, and what the position they 
occupy toward the natives of the land ? what is the char- 
acter of this revolt, and what does it indicate ? what will 
be the issue of the struggle, and what its after results ? 

Nothing, in our view, can shed so much light on all 
_ these points of inquiry, as a brief general sketch of the 
history of India, and of the different incursions and con- 
quests of which it has been the arena. The British are 
not the first race of foreigners who have forced their way 
into the country and wrenched its possession from the 
hands of its older occupants; and we cannot rightly un- 
derstand the character of their dominion, if we know not 
by what it was preceded, from whom it was won, and 
over whom extended ; we cannot appreciate the value of 
the changes it introduced, if we know not the conditions 
in the midst of which it was founded. 

Who were the absolute aborigines of India it is not 
now possible to tell. In the belt of land which stretches 
across the country almost under the Tropic of Cancer, a 
region of rugged mountains and impenetrable forests, 
infested with wild beasts and haunted by yet more dan- 
gerous diseases, is found a chain of wild tribes, of dark 
color, but not of Ethiopian features, and of the humblest 
endowments and capacities of culture. Too little is yet 
known of their languages to indicate with certainty 
whether they are the scanty remains of an earliest In- 
dian population, or offshoots of the race next to be men- 
tioned, debased by thousands of years of savage life. 
Nearly all the southern half of India, the elevated pla- 
teau of the Dekhan, as it is called, with its bordering 
mountain ranges and its low narrow coasts, is occupied 
by afamily of people closely akin with one another in 
physical characteristics and in speech, and known as the 


THE BRITISH IN INDIA. _ a 


Dravidian or the Tamulic family. Whence and when 
they came we know not at present ; whether they poured 
into India over its western frontier, or crept through the 
passes of the Himalaya from the great plateau of Cen- 
tral Asia; whether, again, they hunted the black tribes, 
their predecessors, into the mountains, or entered along 
with them, their own kith and kin: all this remains still 
to be learned, if the evidences be not too uncertain to be 
trusted, from the comparative study of their languages. 
We do know with certainty that, probably about two 
thousand years before the Christian era, this race, or 
these two races, were in full possession of the whole ter- 
ritory of India. They were not, however, to remain 
longer undisturbed. To the northwest, just beyond the 
mountains which beset the entrance to the Cabul valley, 
the passage through which many nations have since trod- 
den on their way to the conquest of Hindustan, lay a 
branch of the great Indo-European family, the most 
highly gifted of all the children of men, although not 
destined till more than a thousand years later to assume 
and assert their rightful place at the head of the race. 
By degrees their tribes threaded the mountain passes, 
descended into the rich valley, itself like a paradise to 
comers from the north, and, tempted ever onward by the 
increasing beauty and fertility which opened before them, 
advanced and took possession of the Penjab, the vesti- 
bule of India. 

Thus was begun the first invasion and conquest of 
India by a people of foreign extraction of which history 
gives us any distinct account. It is the most important 
fact in all the annals of the country, for this intruding 
people became the founders of everything which we are 
accustomed to call Indian. The Aryan tribes — for that 
is the name they gave themselves, both in their old and 
new homes — brought with them institutions of a sim- 
plicity almost primitive, the germs only of the culture 


6 | THE BRITISH IN INDIA. 


which they were afterwards to develop so magnificently ; 
they brought the oldest and least altered reflex of that 
condition and mode of life which were once common to 
Persian, Greek, Roman, German, Slave, and Celt, a relig- 
ion of which the myths and the divinities bear a strange 
resemblance to those of earliest pagan Europe, a language 
of which the wonderfully preserved elements and trans- 
parent structure explain, to a degree elsewhere unknown, 
the history and relations of European languages, the his- 
tory of all language. Hardly, too, had they entered the 
country which was to be henceforth the theatre of their 
action, when they made an imperishable record of both 
language and institutions, in the hymns of the Veda, 
that venerable document, the oldest, the most authentic, 
the fullest of all that are left to illustrate the pre-historic 
history of our branch of the human race. 

The Aryan conquest bore the character common to 
all conquests in the olden time. The new race felt its 
immense superiority, in natural capacity and culture, to 
that with which it came in contact ; it regarded the latter 
as barbarous and unclean, as fit only to be exterminated 
or enslaved. When the torrent of invasion burst forth 
from the Penjab, and poured through the fertile valley 
of Hindustan, it almost swept from existence the former 
owners of the soil. A part saved themselves in the 
mountains on either hand, whither it was useless to follow 
them ; a part were reduced to servitude. As the insti- 
tutions of the intruders developed themselves, and they 
became sundered into three great classes or castes, the 
priestly, the military, and the agricultural, or the Brah- 
man, the Kshatriya, and the Vaigya, such of the aborig- 
ines as yet remained were formed into a fourth class, 
the Cudra, a class which had no rights, but only duties, 
whose highest virtue was to serve humbly and faithfully 
the other three, cut off from all the privileges of educa- 


1 See the preceding volume, first article. _ 


THE BRITISH IN INDIA. ? 


tion and religion which’ they enjoyed, without hope ex- 
cept that of being born again after death into one of the 
higher castes, as the reward of devoted service to them. 
It. was only in the northern half of India, however, that 
the Aryan occupation was thus complete; the expansive 
force of the race mainly exhausted itself in the territory 
of the Ganges and its tributaries ; to the south, beyond 
the Narmada (Nerbudda), the dividing line between 
Hindustan and the Dekhan, the old population still main- 
tained itself and perpetuated its language. It could not, 
indeed, resist the shaping and transforming influence of 
the superior race : by hostile expeditions and conquests, 
by peaceable colonization and intercourse, the Dravidian 
tribes were brought to know and accept the Aryan civil- 
ization ; they adopted the Brahmanic religion and polity ; 
their languages became thickly sown with Sanskrit words, 
and were written in characters derived from the Sanskrit 
alphabet ; their literature was but a repetition or an 
echo of the Sanskrit literature. | 

_ Thus all India was brought under the sway, physical 
or intellectual and moral, of the alien race ; it was thor- 
oughly Aryanized; it became, as far as is possible for 
a country so vast, in customs, beliefs, and institutions, a 
unit, an exponent of one and the same culture. It is 
not a part of our present purpose to follow in any detail 
the history of Aryan India, to exhibit to view the relig- 
ions, the philosophies, the civil institutions, the arts, the 
sciences which the land was made to bring forth under 
its new masters, or to describe the literature in which all 
these are recorded. We have to deal with India chiefly 
as affected from without; and, thanks to the mountains, 
the deserts, and the oceans which make its borders, for 
near three thousand years after the invasion we have de- 
seribed it was left undisturbed, to develop its own char- 
acter and work out its own destiny. The alarms of war 
did, indeed, resound from time to time along its north- 


8 THE BRITISH IN INDIA. 


western frontier, but even the echo of them hardly pene- 
trated into the heart of the country. The first Darius 
might send his generals on an expedition of conquest 
down the Indus, and write the name of India on the list 
of his subject provinces ; Alexander might penetrate into 
the Penjab, and find there no obstacle which could quite 
stay the victorious progress of his veteran army: but In- 
dian history soon forgot the insults. During centuries, 
even, that followed, Greco-Bactrian, Indo-Greek, Par- 
thian, Indo-Scythic dynasties might dispute the posses- 
sion of the valleys of the Cabul and Indus, but into the 
great interior neither their arms nor their influence could 
penetrate. Down to a thousand years after Christ, India 
stood aloof from the commotions which were convulsing 
Europe, and central and western Asia. Meantime all 
nations visited her marts to buy her rich productions ; 
her silk, cotton, indigo, spices, and precious stones sup- 
plied the wants and ministered to the luxury of the East 
and the West. The natural development of her internal 
resources and her foreign commerce had combined to give 
her enormous wealth. At the same time, she had be- 
come greatly weakened in respect to power to repel the 
spoiler. ‘The Indian race and its civilization had reached 
the period of decline. The effect of the sultry climate 
and of the profusion of nature’s gifts which distinguish 
India could not fail to be highly unfavorable upon any 
race which came in from the north, and the Aryans had 
begun to deteriorate, in some respects at least, from al- 
most the first moment when they became exposed to the 
peculiar influences of the country. The stout arms were 
weakened, and the pure hearts corrupted ; the primitive 
freedom of manners and customs was brought under the 
rigorous servitude of caste; the old simple worship of the 
powers of nature grew into a strange compound of mysti- 
eal philosophy and debasing superstition. Quietism be- 
came the prevailing character of the people; they asked 


THE BRITISH IN INDIA. 9 


only to live in peace, to maintain in strictness the purity 
of caste, to perform the inherited ceremonies of a formal 
worship, and to do in all things as their fathers had done. 
It was not, however, until after a long and violent strug- 
gle that India was thus forced into the iron framework of 
the Brahmanic polity. About five centuries before Christ 
had arisen the great Indian protestant reformer, Buddha: 
he strove to break down the supremacy of the priestly 
_easte ; he taught the equality of all conditions of men, 
the worthlessness of ceremonies and sacrifices, the efficacy 
of faith, knowledge, and good works for the attainment 
of salvation: and although the philosophical basis of his 
doctrine was atheistic, and although the beatitude which 
it held up as the object to be striven after was annihila- 
tion, yet its generous humanity and its pure morality 
gave it immense power, and fora long time it disputed 
with Brahmanism the dominion of India. It did not con- 
fine itself to the land of its birth: while Brahmanism 
was as exclusive as Judaism, Buddhism was as expansive 
and universal in its spirit as Christianity ; its peaceful 
missionaries carried its doctrines from country to country, 
till Ceylon, Farther India, and the isles of the Indian 
Ocean, till Tartary, Tibet, and China had accepted the 
religion of the Indian teacher. Meantime, in India itself 
its power was slowly undermined; the Brahmans had too 
strong a hold upon the mind of the people to be shaken 
off ; the ancient tradition proved mightier than the new 
doctrine ; and about eight centuries after Christ, Bud- 
dhism and its votaries were utterly extirpated or driven 
out, and the Brahmans reigned supreme. But they were 
not left long to enjoy in peace the fruits of their victory, 
for already the Moslem was at the gate. 

India had need of regeneration, but she received only 
retribution. It was a hard and cruel fate that brought 
upon her the wild hordes of her Mohammedan conquer- 
ors, for they could not, in the nature of things, do aught 


10 | THE BRITISH IN INDIA. 


but add to the misery of her condition. ‘The Arab con- 
quest was almost nowhere a permanently regenerative 
one. The power for good which lay in the one half of 
its fundamental dogma, “ There is no god but God,” was 
neutralized by the other half, ‘* Mohammed is the prophet 
of God.” The Koran had not borrowed enough from the 
Bible to make it long a safe guide to the human mind, 
_ and the furious zeal which it inspired was much more 
destructive than constructive. It is true that here and 
there the fusion of an ancient civilization with the youth- 
ful energy of the Arab tribes, themselves sprung of a 
noble stock, quickened by the consciousness of a glorious 
eareer of conquest, and enriched with the spoils of em- 
pires overthrown, kindled for a time a bright fire of intel- 
lect, and the Moslem capitals became the brilliant spots 
of the earth, and the Moslem civilization an important 
link between the culture of the ancient and that of the 
modern world; but the flame soon burned out; the 
standard of Mohammed dropped from the weakened 
hands of its Arab bearers, and was taken up by one tribe 
after another of fierce barbarians from Central Asia, who 
made it the signal only of plunder and desolation. Thus, 
in Persia, Islam had the power to dissolve and penetrate 
the old institutions with a new spirit, and to bring out a 
fresh product; after passing through a frightful process, 
after suffering the destruction of its nationality, the over- 
throw of its ancient customs, the annihilation of its relig- 
ion, the profanation of its monuments, Persia came forth 
rejuvenated, and entered upon a new career of intellect- 
ual activity, which is perhaps the proudest in its whole 
history. But it could not be thus in India. Islam was 
too weak to effect anything there save by brute force, 
and India was too vast and populous to be utterly crushed 
and made over in the Mohammedan mill. Between the 
Hindu and the Mohammedan there could be neither com- 
promise nor fusion ; peace and prosperity were impossible 
in the land of which they disputed the possession. 


THE BRITISH IN INDIA. 11 


It was the resurrection of Persian nationality which led 
directly to the overthrow of Indian. As the weakness of 
the central authority of the Caliphs at Bagdad began to 
be felt, the eastern provinces of Persia shook off its yoke, 
and under the successive dynasties of the Taherites, the 
Soffarides, the Samanides, all the country from the Cas- 
pian to the confines of India was independent, the Per- 

sian language prevailed even as that of state and of relig- 
ion, and the new Persian literature sprang into being. 
Yet the springs of action there were not wholly Persian ; 
as enemies on the frontier, as mercenaries, as slaves even, 
the Turkish tribes were beginning to exercise a powerful 
influence on the progress of events. About the year 967, 
Sebektagin, originally a Turkish slave of a Samanid gen- 
eral, was established in Ghazna, as governor of that prov- 
ince of the Samanid empire. He soon rendered himself 
virtually independent, and upon his death his son Mah- 
mud openly renounced his allegiance, assumed the title of 
* Sultan,” till then unknown, and made Ghazna the cap- 
ital of a new realm, which ere long included a great part 
of the possessions of his former masters. (Ghazna lies in 
one of the elevated valleys of the Soliman mountains, the 
range which forms the eastern boundary of Persia, and 
at the base of which is stretched the valley of the Indus ; 
and its site is but little to the southwest of the city of 
Cabul, to which it commands easy access. Thus had the 
vulture built its eyrie upon the heights that overlook the 
goodly land of India, and was ready to swoop upon its 
prey. 

Now began the age of blood in India’s history; the 
heart recoils from the picture of the miseries which Mo- 
hammedan rapacity and bigotry were to inflict upon the 
unhappy country. The very position of Mahmud’s cap- 
ital was a constant threat to India, sufficiently indicating 
which way ambition and the lust of plunder would carry 
him: he is said to have taken a solemn vow that he 


12 . THE BRITISH IN INDIA. 


would make every year a holy raid into the unbelievers’ 
country, for the glory of the Prophet, and he faithfully 
kept it. In the year 1001 the first Mohammedan army 
crossed the Indus, and within twenty-three years the 
Sultan had made twelve great expeditions into the in- 
terior of the country, besides many lesser ones. They 
were rather devastating forays than campaigns of con- 
quest ; fire and sword were carried through the land, and 
an immeasurable booty brought back to the capital in 
the mountains, which with the spoils of India was built 
up into the most magnificent city of the Moslem world ; 
but though the Hindu sovereigns as far eastward as to 
the confluence of the Ganges and Jumna, and southward 
to the peninsula of Guzerat, quailed at the name of the 
destroyer, and acknowledged his supremacy, he founded 
no enduring dominion in the country. 

The glories of the house of Ghazna were soon ob- 
scured. Mahmud’s son was stripped of most of his Per- 
sian possessions by the rising dynasty of Seljuk, and his 
grandson lost all of India save the Penjab. In the next 
century the wild Afghan tribes began to descend from 
their mountains northward of Cabul, to take their part 
in the struggle for empire. Yet the Ghaznevids main- 
tained themselves near two hundred years, with varying 
fortunes ; their capital itself was more than once lost 
and won again; their provinces in Hindustan were con- 
quered anew, and recovered their independence ; but in 
the year 1184 the last weakling descendant of Mahmud 
was thrust from the throne by the Afghan chief Moham- 
med Ghori. Herein lay the hopelessness of the fate of 
India ; no sooner was one race and generation of spoilers 
sated with murder and booty, and weakened by excess, 
than another pressed forward to take its place, with a 
fresh appetite, and with the full vigor of the northern 
savage. The new Afghan dynasty carried its arms far 
beyond the limits of Mahmud’s conquests; in 1193 the 


THE BRITISH IN INDIA. 13 


holy city of Benares was taken, and the Moslem soldiers 
reveled in the devastation of that chief sanctuary of the 
infidel ; in 1227 Ujjayini (Ojein), the capital of the fer- 
tile plateau of Malwa, and the chief seat of Indian liter- 
ature and science, met the same fate; in 1235 Altumsh 
reigned from the Indus to the mouth of the Ganges, 
from the Himalaya to the Nerbudda. 

At this period the Mongols were in the midst of their 
career of conquest in Asia: Genghis Khan had founded 
there the most extensive empire which the world has ever 
seen, reaching from the Chinese seas to the frontiers of 
Germany: and in or about the year 1241, they for the 
first time entered India. They were beaten back, but 
only for a season; they retired with plunder enough to 
be encouraged to return again; and from this time for- 
ward the country was never long free from their ravages, 
although three centuries were still to elapse before a Mo- 
gul dynasty should sit upon the throne of Delhi. 

A new Afghan family, called the Khilji, overthrew in 
1288 the Ghori. And as every change of dynasty was 
fraught with fresh evils to India, so there followed now, 
under Ala-ed-din, the second Khilji, a new era of devas- 
tation. Hitherto the Dekhan had escaped; the deep 
valley of the Nerbudda had been the limit of Moslem 
ravages ; the land beyond was an undiscovered territory. 
About 1295, however, the bloodhounds snuffed the scent 
of prey in the south, and passed the barrier. A booty 
beyond their wildest dreams was the reward of their en- 
terprise, and now the Dekhan was penetrated in every 
direction ; expedition after expedition brought back from 
thence such treasures as the pen of the Mohammedan 
historians had scarcely the power to describe. Here, in 
1306, we meet with the first mention of the Mahrattas, 
as a tribe subdued by Ala’s generals. The dynasty soon 
sank under the load of wealth and the corruption it 
brought, and, about 1821, Ghazi Beg Toghluk founded a 


14 3 THE BRITISH IN INDIA. 


new line of monarchs. The devastation of the Dekhan 
still went on. Under Ghazi’s successor, Mohammed, the 
condition of all India reached a climax of misery; an- 
archy, oppression, and utter desolation reigned from one 
end of the land to the other. Then followed a gentle 
sovereign, who showed during a reign of thirty years 
some solicitude for the welfare of his subjects, a thing so 
rare in the history of Mohammedan India that it deserves 
to be noted; but after his death the old condition of af- 
fairs returned again. 

Now broke over India the hurricane of the last sic 
Mogul invasion, under Tamerlane, the scourge of man- 
kind. In 1397 this ferocious monarch crossed the Indus, 
and after a campaign in the Penjab, attended with even 
more than the usual horrors of a Mogul campaign, he 
marched upon Delhi. As he neared the city, and the 
battle-field where the fate of the empire was to be de- 
cided, he conceived suspicions of the slaves whom his army 
was dragging along with it, as part of the fruits of the 
expedition, and gave orders that every one should imme- 
diately be put to death. He was obeyed, and in one hour 
a hundred thousand souls were massacred in cold blood. 
In the contest that followed he won an easy victory: he 
entered Delhi, and for fifteen days the city was given 
over to the tender mercies of his soldiers. When it was 
thoroughly stripped of all that could be carried away, the 
inhabitants were driven to the gates, and the army al- 
lowed to indemnify itself for its sacrifice before the battle ; 
even common soldiers, we are told, took to themselves 
from fifty to five hundred slaves. Then the conqueror 
marched slowly back, as one must march when so laden, 
skirting the base of the Himalaya, and wreaking Moham- 
medan zeal and piety on the numerous communities of 
fire-worshipers, fugitives from Persia, who had found 
refuge there: wherever he went, he left behind him a 
wilderness, with smoking ruins and pools of blood. He 


THE BRITISH IN INDIA. 15 


returned to his capital, and never troubled India again: 
his work was done: he had put to death hundreds of 
thousands of human beings, had dragged into slavery 
tens of thousands more, had brought away untold treas- 
ure, had turned a blooming country into a desert ; what 
more could he desire? To such an expedition do the 
rights of the recent Emperor of Delhi to rule over India 
date back. 

During a century and.a quarter, however, the claims 
of the house of Timur remained in abeyance. Two dy- 
nasties occupied in the mean time the throne of Delhi. 
The first, the Sadat, lifted its head as soon as aught in 
India dared to look up after the storm had passed over, 
and commenced with calling itself a deputy of the Mogul 
conqueror: it maintained itself for less than thirty-five 
years, and was succeeded by a last Afghan dynasty, 
called the Lodi. It is unnecessary to follow the history 
of this period more closely: it is distinguished by noth- 
ing ; it is one weary succession of confusion, oppression, 
and intestine war ;a progress from misery to misery. 

Next follows for the unhappy country a time of com- 
parative peace, good government, and prosperity, the 
golden age of the Mohammedan period of Indian history. 
Baber, a descendant of Tamerlane and of Genghis Khan, 
was at this time Sultan of a part of the country between 
the Oxus and Jaxartes; he was a man of remarkable 
enterprise and ability, both as warrior and as statesman ; 
yet he was unable to maintain himself in ‘the possession 
of his paternal kingdom against the hordes of adventurers 
that came swarming in from the north upon him. Driven 
southward, he possessed himself of Cabul and its depend- 
encies, and from thence was tempted to undertake the 
conquest of India, which he regarded as rightfully be- 
longing to him, the representative of its former Mogul 
conqueror. After first establishing his authority over 
the Penjab, he set out thence, in 1525, with only fifteen 


16 . THE BRITISH IN INDIA. 


thousand veteran warriors at his back, vanquished the 
Indian army on the fateful field of Panniput, and seated 
himself upon the throne of Indian empire at Delhi. So 
much easier was it to conquer India than to keep an in- 
significant province in Tartary! Baber was no mere 
plunderer, like his predecessors; his ambition was to 
found a great empire in India, and his capacity was equal 
to the undertaking. He died, however, in 1530, before 
the work was half accomplished. The Memoirs which 
he left are more worthy than anything else the Orient 
has produced to be placed by the side of Ceesar’s Com- 
mentaries. His son and successor, Humaytin, inherited 
no small share of his father’s abilities; yet, after ten 
years of valiant struggle against the rebellious Afghan 
chieftains and his traitor brothers, he was driven out of 
the country. Fifteen years he remained in exile, and 
then, returning with Persian auxiliaries, favored by happy 
circumstances, good counsels, and valor, he placed himself 
once more upon the throne. The next year, 1556, he 
died, and his young son, Akbar, born upon the Indus 
during his flight, his companion and aid in all his adven- 
tures since, reigned in his stead. 

To Akbar India and the world have given the title of 
Great, and no monarch, perhaps, ever better deserved it. 
He possessed every virtue that can adorn a ruler ; energy, 
prudence, justice, mercy, were conspicuous in all his con- 
duct ; he lived for the best good of his subjects, Hindu 
not less than Moslem; he established entire toleration 
throughout his dominions, and even indulged in vision- 
ary plans for the establishment of a new religion, which, 
founded on simple love to God and good will to men, 
should comprehend and unite Moslem, Hindu, and Chris- 
tian. He governed the natives of the country through 
their own countrymen and by their own customs ; he pro- 
moted Indian literature and science; he encouraged agri- 
culture by great public works, and by the introduction of 


THE BRITISH IN INDIA. Ti 


new products and methods from the west ; he secured the 
northwestern frontier against farther inroads. His long 
reign of fifty years was the climax of India’s prosperity. 
The famous Ayin Akbart?, ‘Institutes of Akbar,’ com- 
posed under his direction by his great minister, Abul 
Fazl, gives a most instructive picture of his polity, and 
of the condition of the country under his management. 
His son and grandson successively followed him ; the one, 
known as Jehangtr, reigning from 1605 to 1627, the other, 
Shah Jehan, from 1627 to 1656. Little need be said of 
these princes ; they were given to luxurious and dishonor- 
able pleasures, careless of the highest interests of the em- 
pire, and faithless and unscrupulous in their policy. The 
blood of the race of Baber, which had given to India three 
generations of rulers of so eminent qualities, was beginning 
to’ degenerate; but its virtue was sooner exhausted than 
its ability; the reins of government were still grasped 
with a strong hand, and general tranquillity maintained ; 
and the institutions of Akbar still subsisted to secure 
the peace and happiness of the people. Shah Jehan, on 
his accession to the throne, had put to death every other 
male descendant of Baber, that he might have no rivals to 
fear ; in the year 1655 he himself fell sick, and the flames 
of civil war were at once lighted up all over the realm by 
his four sons, fighting for empire and for life. He re- 
covered, but too late; Aurengzib, the youngest but one 
of the four, had triumphed over his brothers by dint of 
superior craft and ability, and had no mind to sink to the 
condition of a subject again; Shah Jehan was dethroned, 
and lived long enough to see meted out to his own descend- 
ants the fate to which he had doomed his father’s. Au- 
rengzib was a despot and an oppressor of his people, a big- 
oted Mohammedan, jealous and suspicious in the extreme, 
of profound dissimulation and inexorable cruelty. His ter- 
rible energy and executive capacity, and his unscrupulous 


use of all the arts of treachery and craft, kept India quiet 
2 


18 | THE BRITISH IN INDIA. 


under his sceptre; but it was a deceitful quiet; the old 
hatred between Hindu and Moslem was revived in all its 
intensity, the bonds which bound the empire together 
were dissolved, its strength was exhausted by intestine 
and foreign warfare, and it was ready to fall to pieces as 
soon as the grasp of a strong central authority should be 
removed. 

We have now for some time taken no notice of the 
state of affairs in the Dekhan. Its history had been from 
the middle of the fourteenth century almost entirely 
severed from that of Hindustan. For a time, under the 
weak and wicked Mohammed Khilji, it had been nearly 
cleared of its Mohammedan invaders; then an army of 
mutinous mercenaries, Afghans and Turks, had estab- 
lished there, under a dynasty called the Bahmani, an in- 
dependent realm, which, after subsisting for near two 
centuries, had broken up, about the time of Baber’s inva- 
‘sion, into several separate, kingdoms.. No sooner was the 
great Akbar firmly fixed upon his throne than he turned 
his arms southward, to recover the provinces formerly 
subject to the throne of Delhi; but, after a vigorous be- 
ginning, he had to leave the contest as a legacy to his 
posterity. A fatal legacy it proved. Jehangir, indeed, 
was content with maintaining what his father had won ; 
but the whole reign of Shah Jehan was occupied with 
wasting and harassing warfare against the sovereigns of 
the south, which exhausted the resources of both the com- 
batants. It was in the Dekhan that Aurengzib had laid 
the foundations of the power which he used to dethrone 
his father; it was in the Dekhan that he wore out his 
strength in desperate struggles with a foe at first deemed 
insignificant, but which finally rose upon the ruins of his 
empire. This foe was the_nation of the Mahrattas, a 
name henceforth prominent among the first in Indian 
history. 

The Mahrattas were a people of Hindu origin, origin- 


THE BRITISH IN INDIA. 19 


ally occupying the fastnesses of the mountains which over- 
hang the western shore of India, to the north and south 
of Bombay. We have noted the first mention of them, 
in 1306. During the three centuries which had since 
elapsed, they had continued a simple tribe of mountain- 
eers, too insignificant to play any part in the struggles of 
the Mohammedan dynasties in the Dekhan; but when 
wars unending had weakened the forces of the whole 
country, they began to appear upon the scene. Their 
first great chief, Sivaji, commenced his career about 1650, 
and before his death, in 1682, he had become master of 
Konkana, the sea-coast province at the base of his native 
mountains, and had spread the name and the terror of the 
Mahrattas over half the Dekhan. His son and successor, 
Sambaji, was taken and put to death with barbarous 
cruelty by the Emperor, in 1690; but the ravages of the 
tribe continued; and after his generals had for ten years 
longer tried in vain to put down and annihilate the South- 
ern Plunderers, as they were called, Aurengzib was com- 
pelled to take the field against them in person. He met 
with little better success ; his foes could never be brought 
to face him long enough to be beaten ; and while he was 
engaged in besieging their fortresses, desperately defended 
by a few resolute men, their predatory bands were levying 
contributions all over his dominions. The last seven 
years of his life were spent in this inglorious contest: he 
died in 1707, and with him departed forever the strength 
and glory of the Mogul empire. Impotence and utter 
confusion followed; henceforth the titular Emperor was 
no more than the plaything of a court, the puppet of 
the great vassals who disputed the rght in his name 
to plunder and oppress the country ; at one time, within 
a period of only eleven years, five emperors were mur- 
dered, and six pretenders to the throne set up and 
pulled down again. It was not the Mahrattas who had 
brought the empire to this low estate ; its dissolution was 


20 THE BRITISH IN INDIA. 


the effect of a natural process, the same through which all 
Moslem empires have had to pass; despotic power, when 
deserted of virtue, energy, and prudence, can lead only to 
weakness and anarchy. The Mahrattas, however, did 
their full part in hastening the downfall, and it was they 
who reaped from it the largest share of benefit. 

At the commencement of their career, the Mahrattas 
represented in some measure a rising of the native Hindu 
population against its Mohammedan oppressors. Their 
chiefs were all Hindus, of the various castes ; their lan- 
guage, their customs, their religious usages, were of Hindu 
origin. ‘They made war rather upon the governments 
‘than upon the people, sparing or affecting to spare the 
latter as much as possible, and their incursions were not 
unfrequently encouraged or invited by the petty Hindu 
Rajahs, who sought in them a check upon the oppression 
of the lieutenants of the empire. Their power lay to no 
small degree in the impossibility of inflicting upon them 
any harm comparable to that which they could inflict. 
They had no rich country, no cities to defend ; they were 
possessors of nothing which they could not afford to lose, 
and of which the loss was not easily to be made up; they 
were a nation on horseback ; their mounted bands roved 
through the country incumbered only by the spoil they 
bore away, and what they won was soon spent in adding 
to their forces new levies of the same lawless soldiery. 
Had India been in other than a state of defenseless an- 
archy, the increase of their power might soon have found 
a limit; as it was, they grew rapidly in might, and ex- 
tended their ravages on every side, till hardly a nook or a 
corner of the country had escaped their visitation, or was 
exempted from the tribute they levied. Their policy was 
at first only an organized system of pillage; they were 
accustomed to demand of the provinces they threatened 
with devastation a certain portion of the public revenue, 
generally the fourth part; and this, under the name of 


THE BRITISH IN INDIA. i 


the chout, became the recognized Mahratta tribute, the 
price of the absence of their plundering hordes. The 
chout, however, was often made a pretext for unlimited 
exaction, or for such an interference with the administra- 
tion of a country as ended in their taking entire posses- 
sion of it. It was in the nature of things that a state so 
constituted could not long retain its form unaltered; and 
indeed, the Mahratta state, if it were ever entitled to that 
name, ran through a rapid succession of changes. Under 
their early Rajahs, there was among the marauding bands 
enough of coherence and submission to the central au- 
thority to render it possible to direct upon any point force 
enough to overcome the resistance found there; but the 
reins of power dropped from the weak hands of the 
grandson of Sivaji, and while the eastern portion of the 
dominion which the tribe had won fell off, and formed a 
separate realm under the chieftain Bhonsla, the Rajah 
himself was stripped of power and placed in close confine- 
ment for life, while his Peshwa, or hereditary prime 
minister, assumed the direction of affairs in his name, 
and became the acknowledged head of a loose confederacy 
of states, founded by the most noted and successful lead- 
ers, out of the territories which their arms had won, or 
which had been assigned them for the support of the 
troops that fought under their banners. 

It was in or about the year 1690 that the Mahrattas 
first crossed the Nerbudda; the torrent of invasion had 
never rolled through its valley in that direction before: 
from this time, the plateau of Malwa, next north of the 
river, the hills and vales of the Rajput country to the 
westward, and the rich peninsula of Guzerat, with its de- 
pendencies upon the main-land, were brought ever more 
and more under their influence and authority. Forty 
years later, they were acknowledged as the dominant 
power throughout Central India; in 1735, the second 
Peshwa, Bajerao, after overrunning and plundering for 


the THE BRITISH IN INDIA. 


the first time the plains of Hindustan, up to the very gates 
of Delhi, extorted from the Emperor the appointment of 
Viceroy of Malwa; and before his death, in 1740, he had 
levied the chout, or tribute of one fourth, upon the whole 
remaining revenue of the Mogul empire. His successor, 
Ballaji, received the same appointment, his four chief 
generals, Puar, Holkar, Sindia, and Gaikwar, becoming 
his sureties for obedience and faithful service. These 
are names which have still an existence and a value in 
Indian history ; the independent states they founded are 
yet in the possession of their descendants: the seat of 
Sindia’s government is at Gwalior; Holkar’s capital is 
‘Indore, near the crest of the Vindhyas; the Gaikwar is 
ruler of Guzerat; the Puars have territories of less ex- 
tent in Malwa. 

We have left for a season the story of the intrigues 
and murders, the treasons and rebellions, of which the 
throne of Delhi was the centre, because the fates of In- 
dia, during this period, were much more closely linked 
with the rising fortunes of the Mahrattas than with the 
decadence of the Mogul empire. But events were now 
transpiring in the north which require our notice, as in- 
dicating the forlorn and helpless condition into which the 
land had fallen. In 1789, the ferocious Nadir, who, from 
a shepherd-boy, had become a captain of banditti, then a 
leader of mercenaries, and finally Shah of Persia, while 
engaged in subjecting the Afghans of Cabul, received an 
insult from the Indian monarch. Without delay he 
marched into India to avenge it. This was the first time 
that the frontier of the Mogul empire had been passed 
by a foreign enemy. Nadir easily overthrew the forces 
which were sent out from Delhi to bar his passage, and 
entered the city. Massacre and plunder followed ; the 
imperial treasury was robbed and public property seized, 
to the estimated amount of $150,000,000; then, with 
horrid cruelties and tortures, the wealth of private indi- 


THE BRITISH IN INDIA. yA} 


viduals was extorted from them ; and, leaving the city to 
famine and pestilence, the Persian returned to his own 
dominions, restoring to his throne the pillaged emperor, 
and exacting of him only the cession of all territory west 
of the Indus. In 1747, Nadir was murdered in his tent, 
and Afghanistan became an independent state under 
Ahmed Shah Abdalli, who succeeded his old master as 
scourge of India. Two years after his accession to the 
throne, he severed the Penjab from the Mogul empire 
forever. The next year the Mahrattas were called in to 
defend Hindustan against Afghan invasion: they were 
successful in repelling the enemy, but seized themselves 
upon the country they had rescued. Again, in 1756, 
Ahmed returned, captured Delhi, and almost reénacted 
the horrors of Nadir’s invasion, when a pestilence which 
broke out in his camp forced him to retire. After his 
withdrawal, the Mahrattas had everything their own 
way, and were threatening to swallow up the last rem- 
nants of the empire, when the Afghan was once more 
called in to the aid of the Mohammedan chiefs, who chose 
submission to the rule of the foreigner rather than of the 
infidel. The whole force of the Mahratta states, under 
their ablest chiefs, was assembled to oppose him. On 
the old battle-field of Panniput was once more disputed 
the empire of India. The Mahrattas were signally de- 
feated ; a hundred thousand fell in the battle, and as 
many more in the pursuit; the aggressive power of the 
confederacy was for the time annihilated. No other re- 
sult, however, followed from the victory of the Afghan 
monarch; he returned home almost immediately, and 
never again attempted to interfere in the affairs of India. 

The battle of Panniput was fought in January, 1761: 
but already, four years before, the battle of Plassey had 
laid the foundation of British power in the country. The 
main interest of Indian history shifts once more, to the 
two points on its eastern frontier, Madras and Calcutta, 


24 3 THE BRITISH IN INDIA. 


where a company of merchants were preparing to become 
the arbiters of its destinies. 

We have given with so much of detail the history of 
the wars, revolutions, and invasions which preceded and 
prepared the way for the entrance of the English upon 
their career of conquest in India, because a full knowl- 
edge of the condition of the country, and of the causes 
which led to it, is the most necessary requisite for judg- 
ing aright the English occupation. Never was a great 
country, rich in natural resources of every kind, rich in 
an inheritance of ancient glories, in a more deplorable 
condition than India in the middle of the last century, 
Seven hundred and fifty years, of almost unbroken op- 
pression and misrule, were surely enough to accomplish 
the destruction of any state. We have seen that, even 
at the beginning of this period, Indian civilization and 
the Indian character were in a state of decadence ; after 
Persian, Afghan, Turk, and Mogul had successively pil- 
laged him, trampled upon him, torn him asunder in their 
struggles for the right to oppress him, the Hindu could 
not come out otherwise than yet further degraded and 
brutalized. Weare unable to see anything but- unmixed 
evil in the Mohammedan occupation of India. Had the 
wild tribes of the north come in as did the Goths upon 
southern Europe, bringing fresh blood and uncorrupted 
simplicity to infuse a purer life into what was old and 
effete, or even as did the Normans into England, to 
blend, after a brief period of oppression and separation, 
with the mass of the people, contributing only a new ele- 
ment to their language, manners, and institutions, valu- 
able results for both races might perhaps have followed: 
but it was not so; to the last the two stood distinctly 
apart as oppressors and victims ; there were no grounds 
for hope that the relation would ever be changed ; one or 
the other must be annihilated or driven from the coun- 
try, or else both must be rendered harmless and tolerant 


THE BRITISH IN INDIA. 25 


of one another by subjection to a third power. How lit- 
tle of capacity was left in the country itself to effect its 
own regeneration appeared clearly from the character of 
the national uprising which took place at the decay of 
the Mogul empire: it showed itself incapable of aught 
but mischief and disorganization, powerless to expel the 
old enemies of the land, helpless against the attack of 
new foes. Nowhere was there to be discovered anything 
_ which gave promise of improvement. The future was as 
dark as the present. Was India to be left to herself to 
work out thus her own destruction, or was she to come 
into the possession of a new master? She lay there at 
the mercy of whoever was strong and bold enongh to 
seize upon her: was she to fall into the hands of a bar- 
barian, or of a civilized and Christian nation? These 
questions were to be answered, and her fate to be finally 
determined, by the events of the next fifty years. 

The English, it is well known, were not the first Euro- 
peans to open commerce with India, and gain territorial 
possessions there. A hundred years before the formation 
of the East India Company, twenty-seven years before 
the invasion of Baber, the Portuguese had found their 
way to the coast of Malabar, and established factories 
which still subsist. Not a little of the same rapacity, 
bigotry, and cruelty which marked the Mohammedan 
invasions characterized the proceedings of this Christian 
power. Happily, Portugal was too weak a country, and 
its energy and enterprise declined too speedily, to allow 
of its affecting seriously the history of India. Before the 
arrival of the English, a part of its possessions had fallen 
into the hands of the Dutch, and at the beginning of the 
last century these three powers were rivals for the gains 
of Indian trade. The East India Company was organ- 
ized in 1600: its first factory was established in 1620, at 
Surat, near the seat of the ancient commerce by sea be- 
tween India and the west; in 1636, another was set up 


26 : THE BRITISH IN INDIA. 


on the Hoogly, above the present site of Calcutta; in 
1640, Madras. was acquired ; in 1668, Bombay was given 
to the Company by Charles II., who had received it as 
part of the dowry of the Portuguese princess he had 
married ; Calcutta was purchased in 1698. Up to this 
time, and even till fifty years later, the Company was 
simply a company of traders, neither possessing nor aim- 
ing at political power; they were occupied with the 
endeavor to enrich themselves by means of traffic, and 
to this end they acquired certain sites, built factories, 
obtained privileges from the native princes, and sought 
to exclude their rivals from competition with them. But 
herein, little as they knew or suspected it, lay the germ 
of the whole after development of the British Indian 
empire ; they could not maintain themselves, and protect 
their property and the rights which had been ceded to 
them, without becoming a power in the land; they could 
not subsist as a power, and command peace about them, 
without possessing the supreme authority over the whole 
country. We will run briefly over the steps of the prog- 
ress by which this end was reached. 

The first foundation of British empire in India was 
laid by the French; it was they who originated the idea 
of a great European power in India, and from them the 
English learned it, or won it by hard blows. The French 
established themselves in the Carnatic (as the region 
along the southeastern coast of the peninsula, from Mad- 
ras southward and northward, was called) much later than 
the English ; and they not only were looked upon by the 
latter as interlopers, but formed such plans, and carried 
on such intrigues, for the extension of French power and 
influence through the country, that it was impossible for 
them and the English to live peaceably together. The 
struggle began in 1746, with the capture of Madras by 
the French; and until 1761, when Pondicherry was 
taken by the English, and the French power annihilated, 


THE BRITISH IN INDIA. 27 


there was almost constant war between them. Meantime, 
in 1756, the Nabob of Bengal made an unprovoked attack 
upon Calcutta, which ended in the well-known tragedy 
of the Black Hole. The next year retaliation began ; 
the battle of Plassey overthrew the Nabob, and placed 
upon his throne a rival, the creature of English power, 
and the extensive districts of Burdwan, Mednipur, and 
Chittagong were ceded to the Company. But the dif- 
ficulties in Bengal continued; and, after a series of 
changes little creditable to the policy or integrity of the 
Company’s officers, the administration of the three great 
provinces of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa was directly 
vested in the English by a grant from the Emperor of 
Delhi. The successful termination of the French war 
gave the Company the possession of sundry lesser dis- 
tricts in the Carnatic, and in 1765 an imperial grant 
placed under its authority the country called the North- 
ern Circars, extending along the coast from the Carnatic 
to Orissa. 

For more than twenty-five years after this, through 
the noted administration of Warren Hastings (1772- 
1785), and almost to the close of that of Lord Cornwal- 
lis (1786-1793), there were no further important acces- 
sions of territory ; but it was by no means an interval of 
peace and quiet; violent dissensions among the Com- 
pany’s servants, disputes and difficulties with all the 
native Indian powers, a harassing and useless war with 
the Mahrattas, and a desperate conflict with Hyder Ali 
of Mysore, marked this, the transition period of British 
India, ‘the time of half measures and of vacillating 
policy, resulting in both internal and external weakness. 

In 1790 a new war broke out with Mysore. The Sul- 
tan of that country was the deadliest and most formida- 
ble enemy of the British. At about the time of the 
great battle of Panniput, Hyder Ali was a low-born 
freebooter and adventurer in the service of the Hindu 


28 3 THE BRITISH IN INDIA. 


Rajah of Mysore. Being eminent in the qualities which 
then led to power in India, he had succeeded in over- 
throwing his master and usurping control of the govern- 
ment, and with all the energy of a new dynasty had 
established himself in the possession of a great kingdom 
in the south of the Dekhan, reaching from the Carnatic 
to the Malabar coast, and growing at the expense of its 
neighbors on every side. Had it not been for British 
opposition, Hyder might perhaps have subjugated the 
whole Dekhan; and he hated the British accordingly. 
Two wars he had fought against them with varying suc- 
cess, unsubdued, though unsuccessful. He had died 
before the close of the second, but his son Tippoo inher- 
ited his ability, his cruelty, his bigotry, and his animosity. 
The third conflict terminated most disastrously for My- 
sore. After two campaigns, Tippoo was reduced to pur- 
chase peace by the cession of half his territories to the 
Company. 

Again, from 1793 to 1798, a season of outward tran- 
quillity followed, under the administration of Sir John 
Shore (Lord Teignmouth) ; the orders of the home gov- 
ernment were strict, and were conscientiously carried out, 
but the policy of non-intervention, of peace at any price, 
brought the state to the brink of ruin. The French were 
then the masters of Europe, and even India was drawn 
into the magnjficent plans of Napoleon for the destruction 
of England. French influence was predominant in the 
three great native Indian courts, that of Tippoo, of the 
Nizam of the Dekhan, hitherto England’s faithful ally, 
and of the Mahrattas, in whose keeping was the Em- 
peror of Delhi. The genius and energy of Lord Welles- 
ley (1798-1805), ably seconded by his brother, afterward 
Duke of Wellington, who won here his first laurels, 
turned the scale everywhere in favor of the English. 
‘The Nizam was manceuvred into English interests, and 
his French-trained army disbanded. In 1799, Tippoo’s 


‘THE BRITISH IN INDIA. | 29 


capital was stormed and he himself slain; the ancient 
Rajahs of Mysore were raised from a dungeon to the 
throne, as dependents of the Company, with nearly their 
ancient territory, stripped only of the conquests of Hyder 
and Tippoo. ‘Then followed a severe conflict with the 
Mahrattas. It was waged nominally in support of the 
Peshwa, or head of the confederacy, against his rebellious 
chiefs, who were contending together for the possession 
of his person, in order to gain the support of his name 
and authority. The Mahrattas were everywhere beaten, 
their French forces annihilated, the Emperor rescued 
from their custody, and extensive cessions of their terri- 
tory exacted, both in Hindustan, Central India, and the 
Dekhan. 

It was not in war only that the English extended their 
dominion under Lord Wellesley. ‘They carried matters. 
with a high hand among their allies and dependents, 
pulling down, reforming, reconstructing, as it seemed to 
them that the interests of British India demanded. The 
Nabob of Surat was deposed and pensioned. ‘The Vizier 
of Oude was compelled to purchase with half his domin- 
ions the security of the other half. With the Nabob of 
the Carnatic the English had been involved in most com- 
plicated relations, which brought distress and confusion 
on him and his dominions, ever since they had estab- 
lished him on the throne in opposition to the French ; the 
embarrassment was now relieved by his forced withdrawal 
into private life upon a liberal pension. No such increase 
of power and responsibility had marked the administra- 
tion of any former Governor-general. The Company 
were alarmed; they sent out stringent orders for peace, 
and replaced Lord Wellesley by Lord Cornwallis, who 
lived but three months after his arrival at Calcutta. Sir 
John Barlow succeeded him provisionally, and then Lord 
Minto, who governed from 1807 to 1815 in almost un- 
disturbed tranquillity. 


30 , THE BRITISH IN INDIA. 


But the foundations of peace had not yet been securely 
laid. Hardly had Lord Hastings taken the direction of 
affairs, in 1813, when hostilities broke out with Nepal, 
the long narrow district of hill country lying at the base 
of the Himalaya. ‘The hardy mountaineers, over-confi- 
dent in their own valor and the strength of their position, 
provoked a war wantonly, fought it manfully, and were 
allowed to purchase peace with the loss of but a small 
portion of their territory, eastward from the upper 
course of the Ganges. Now followed a more serious 
struggle. Tor many years a great system of plunder 
had been laying waste all the interior of India. Season 
after season, bands of marauders had burst out from 
their hiding places in the mountains, ravaging and de- 
stroying with a savage ruthlessness which threw into the 
shade even the old devastation of the Carnatic by Hyder 
Ali, immortalized by the eloquence of Burke. They 
fought under no one’s name, but were harbored and en- 
couraged by the Mahratta rulers. A system of operations 
was arranged for their repression, and upon a most 
extensive scale, for it was well foreseen that the Mahrat- 
tas would take up their cause when once the combat was 
joined. The campaign was conducted with great skill 
and energy, and with complete success. The defection 
of Sindia was crushed in its commencement, and only the 
little province of Ajmir, in the Rajput country, was taken 
from him; the Peshwa’s perfidy was rewarded with the 
loss of all his territories, and his exile as a pensioner to 
Hindustan ; the other great Mahratta chieftain, Bhonsla, 
Rajah of Nagpore and Berar, was stripped of his districts 
along the Nerbudda, which gave the English a continu- 
ous chain of possessions through the heart of India. The 
bands of the Pindarris, as the marauders were called, 
were annihilated, and peace so thoroughly established 
throughout the interior that no general disturbance has 
since been possible. ‘The supremacy of the Company 


THE BRITISH IN INDIA. 31 


over the whole land, its right to supervise the relations of 
all the existing states, to settle disputes, to prevent war 
and commotion, to dictate peace, was at length solemnly 
proclaimed. India had become British India. 

Wag and annexation, however, were not yet at an end. 
Under the administration of Lord Amherst (1823-1827), 
the Indian government was forced into hostilities with 
Burma, as the result of which, in 1826, Asam and the 
long strips of sea-coast in Farther India which border 
the bay of Bengal, Arracan and Tenasserim, were ceded 
to the British. In 1834, the Rajah of the little hill dis- 
trict of Kuarg, in the south, formerly saved by English 
interposition from the vengeance of Tippoo, was deposed, 
for horrible tyranny and cruelty, and hostility to English 
interests. After the great catastrophe of the invasion of 
Afghanistan, in 1848, difficulties occurred with the Emirs 
of Sindh, the country bordering on the lower Indus; and 
Sindh was conquered and annexed. In 1845, the Sikhs, 
who had maintained peaceful relations with the Company 
during the life of their great ruler, Ranjit Singh, became 
turbulent, and invaded the British dominions. ‘Though 
beaten back, and mulcted of a portion of their territory, 
their spirit was not quelled; in 1848, war broke out anew, 
and ended only in the reduction of the whole Penjab 
under British authority. A new Burman war, in 1852, 
gave to the Company the province of Pegu, in Farther 
India. In 1854, Nagpore and Berar, the realm of the 
Mahratta chief Bhonsla, were taken possession of on the 
extinction of his line. Finally, nm 1856, Oude was an- 
nexed, on account of the failure of its rulers to meet 
their obligations to the Company, and their outrageous 
tyranny and mismanagement, which rendered it the seat 
of distress and disorder, and dangerous to the security of 
its neighbors. 

The territory thus immediately subjected to British 
rule is estimated at 840,000 square miles, and sustains a 


4 : THE BRITISH IN INDIA. 


population of 132,000,000; that which still remains un- 
der the authority of its native rulers amounts to 628,000 
square miles, with 48,000,000 inhabitants. .The native 
powers, however, have the privilege only of internal — 
administration ; they are allowed neither to form freaties 
nor make war ; the Indian government guarantees their 
security without and tranquillity within, and enjoys 
either a constant or a contingent right to payment for 
this protection, and to the service of their armies in case 
of need. 

We have passed thus hastily and lightly over the his- 
tory of the British dominion in India, sketching only its 
general features, and entering into no discussion of its 
details, for more than one reason. In the first place, the 
subject is too vast and difficult to admit of a full exhibi- 
tion here. No course of events occurring in modern 
times, and respecting which information has been at once 
so abundant and so accessible, has been more variously 
judged. The public opinion even of England itself has 
been divided between enthusiastic admiration, hesitating 
approval, and bitter condemnation. Each separate act is 
a case of casuistry, requiring for its solution the fullest 
comprehension of all the conflicting rights and interests 
which it was destined to affect, of all the circumstances 
which led to and accompanied it. But again, such an 
extended discussion is not necessary to our present pur- 
pose. In great historical events like those-which we are 
now considering, there comes a time when we have a 
right to let bygones be bygones, to wipe out the past, and 
judge the present by what it is and what it promises. 
We would by no means maintain the right of national 
interference: that one people may take upon itself the 
guardianship of another, however much the latter may 
mismanage its own affairs; or that a part of the earth’s 
surface of which the resources are neglected or wasted 
by its present occupants may be wrested from-them by 


THE BRITISH IN INDIA. 33 


others who feel that they can better administer the inher- 
itance. But, fearful as were the excesses committed by 
the Teutonic barbarians, in the first heat of conquest, 
upon the corrupt races they dispossessed, who does not 
now rejoice in the invasion which brought about a reju- 
venation of Europe? Were there a whole continent now 
peopled by savage or half-savage tribes, humanity would 
shudder at the thought of their being deliberately driven 
out, or swept from existence, to make room for a race of 
better husbandmen of man’s heritage. Yet, the work 
being once done, as it has been done upon the soil we 
occupy, on whose conscience presses heavily the burden 
of the wrongs done to the red man, as we look abroad 
and see what a wondrous change civilization has wrought 
upon his wild and gloomy forests? This is what we are 
wont to call the hand of Providence in human history, 
bringing good out of evel. Now if we were to go back 
to the beginning of Indian history, and place under the 
ban of our condemnation all who have forced their way 
into the country to the detriment of its earlier possessors, 
we should, as has been seen, leave few unmolested. But 
we have accepted the first, the Aryan, conquest, because 
it was, upon the whole, productive of grand and valuable 
results ; because it made of India a great united country, 
the seat of an admirable civilization, the scene of events, 
the birth-place of institutions, which have told powerfully, 
and for good, upon the history of the world. By a simi- 
lar judgment we have rejected the Mohammedan occupa- 
tion, because, undertaken in fanaticism and rapacity, it 
was consistently carried out under the guidance of the 
same principles, to its inevitable end in anarchy and con- 
fusion ; because it produced incalculable misery, and 
accomplished inappreciable good; because its continu- 
ance held out no prospect of improvement, but only of 
prolonged and increased misery. 


By the same rules would we likewise judge the British 
3 


34 | THE BRITISH IN INDIA. 


conquest. Much of wrong and much of error we can 
and must allow that there was, both in its inception and 
in the steps by which it was accomplished. England, it 
is granted, had no right to subject India to her authority. 
It must also be granted that she had no will to do so. 
Had the East India Company, had the English people, 
seen the end from the beginning, they would have re- 
coiled in fear, if not in horror. It is a fact acknowledged 
and familiar that they never did foresee the end: every 
movement forward they hoped would be the last; with 
every new pacification they believed that a finality had 
been reached. The consent of the Company and of the 
nation was always a step, and often a long one, behind 
the march of events in India: they were forbidding ag- 
gression, commanding peace, protesting against aggran- 
dizement ; but their servants did not and could not obey, 
for they were only accomplishing what both Company 
and nation required of them, that the British possessions, 
authority, and influence should be maintained, wherever 
in the country they had been acquired and established. 
In this necessity of constant advance after a beginning 
had once been made, a necessity felt and aeted upon 
more than acknowledged, lies the explanation, and the 
excuse, if not the justification, of the British empire in 
India. That it was a necessity, we fully believe; the 
advance of the English to the virtual authority over all 
India was as natural an effect of the same causes as that 
of the Anglo-Saxon race to the possession of America, 
after the first settlements made upon the Atlantic border. 
They were the one fixed point in a whirlwind of confu- 
sion, which could subside into order only under an influ- 
ence radiating from them. They had acquired property 
and rights in a country where neither were wont to be 
sure to their possessors for a day against violence, where 
treachery and oppression were the normal condition of 
things, where governments had neither the power nor 


THE BRITISH IN INDIA. 35 


the will to keep their pledged faith ; they had no protec- 


~- tion to rely upon save their own stout arms and hearts ; 


if they were bent on preserving what was their own, and 
repelling insult and injury, they could not but go on, step 
by step, till their word became the supreme law in every 
part of the continent of India. 

It must be further admitted that the means by which 
the great end was attained were often far from unexcep- 
tionable ; that great errors, and not a few great crimes, 
were committed ; that greed of gold, and ambition of au- 
thority and distinction, came in as an important element 
in the contest ; that there are many pages in the history 
of British India which no Briton can read without a 
blush, no friend of humanity without a shudder. Would 
that it were not always thus in human history! We 
have no right, however, to leave out of consideration the 
peculiar difficulties under which the British labored in 
their relations with India. It was as an unknown country 
to them when they first set foot upon its shores ; its geog- 
raphy, history, political divisions, institutions, manners 
and customs, and languages, had all to be learned. If they 
understood so little what and whom they were dealing 
with, they understood no better what they were striving 
after and tending toward. Three concurrent powers 
were dividing between them the management of Indian 
affairs —the English Parliament, the East India Com- 
pany, and the Indian government; each with its own 
full share of selfishness, party spirit, and shortsight- 
edness, each embarrassing, almost as often as aiding, 
the action of the others. Much, accordingly, was done 
unjustly, was done blunderingly and by halves. Had 
the English nation set out with the avowed determina- 
tion of subjecting India to its authority, pursuing for 
that end one consistent and energetic course of action, 
no doubt a great saving of life and treasure might have 
been effected, and perhaps — although that is more ques- 


36 THE BRITISH IN INDIA. 


tionable — more might have been left than is now left of 
native government under British superintendence. It is 
clear, however, that there has been from the commence- 
ment a steady and marked improvement, both in the 
wisdom and the humanity which have characterized the 
action of the British in India. They began as an irre- 
sponsible company of individuals, seeking for gain, in 
competition with greedy and unscrupulous rivals, and in 
a country of which the wealth, reputed vast beyond con- 
ception, was extorted and squandered by governments 
indescribably vile, corrupt, and oppressive. It is not 
strange, then, that something of the grasping selfishness 
and disregard of principle which formed the atmosphere 
in which they lived and moved infected the British offi- 
cials, was communicated to the Company, and even 
showed itself in the first movements of the Parliament 
toward interference with Indian affairs. But, for the 
honor of England and the happiness of India, British 
rapacity and corruption did not grow with British power ; 
the tone of the government rose in the measure of the 
responsibility it assumed; the pettiness of a trading 
company was rebuked and vanished, and in its place rose 
the majesty of a great nation. India was brought more 
and more under the care of the whole English people, 
placed under the egis of that public opinion than which 
a more enlightened and a more humane protector is no- 
where to be found on earth. If great errors and crimes 
have been committed on Indian soil, so also has it been 
the arena where eminent abilities and shining virtues 
have displayed themselves. The record of these hundred 
years is of startling interest, and pregnant with instruc- 
tion ; and it is all opened before the eyes of the world; 
nothing is hidden ; universal attention and criticism are 
invited to it; and no nation is more ready than England 
itself to study and learn, to praise or condemn as the case 
shall demand, to heed both warning and example. 


THE BRITISH IN INDIA. 37 


In estimating, therefore, the present position of the 
_ British in India, and in giving or withholding from them 
our approving sympathy, we are not required to lay to 
their account the evils caused by the folly and injustice 
of a past generation. The English of this day have re- 
ceived their Indian empire as a legacy from their ances- 
tors, with all the advantages, and with all the responsi- 
bilities, which the possession of such an empire brings ; 
they have received it, also, with the balance of the, good 
or evil which have thus far resulted from English interfer- 
ence in Indian affairs. Our standard of judgment must 
be: what, on the whole, has England done for India, and 
what does she promise to do for it? Now if we have | 
read aright the history of India down to the last century, 
and have sketched a true picture of the miserable an- 
archy, hopeless of improvement from within, helpless 
against aggression from without, into which it had fallen, 
we must allow that there was never a country which 
more needed to be taken under the charge of some power- 
ful guardian, to be saved both from its own madness and 
from the malice of its foes. Nor can we rejoice too much 
that it should have fallen into the hands of the British 
nation. It is the custom to taunt England with being 
too grasping in her acquisitiveness, too much. devoted to 
her own material interests, too little regardful of the in- 
dependent rights of those upon whom she imposes her in- 
fluence. Doubtless there is much of truth in this: if 
individuals are selfish, nations are not less so. But there 
are higher and lower grades of selfishness; and happily 
the aggrandizement of Great Britain is closely linked 
with the best good of the human race; she flourishes by 
virtue of a system which requires for its full development 
the peace and prosperity of every nation on the earth. 
The interests of commerce, as interpreted by her, are 
safer and more beneficent regulators of the relations of 
states than the desire of national glory, or than zeal for 


38 ; THE BRITISH IN INDIA. 


the extension of free institutions, as the latter are under- 
stood in some parts of the world. It is our firm convic- 
tion that no other nation possesses in the same degree 
those valuable traits of character — political wisdom, 
executive capacity, steadiness, energy, integrity, high- 
toned morality and humanity— which, in combination 
with her external advantages, make England the best 
guardian in whose care the welfare and happiness of In- 
dia equld be placed. 

The good which the English occupation has accom- 
plished for India already outweighs a hundred times the 
evil by which it has been accompanied. It has estab- 
lished the sway of the two great principles, toleration to 
religion and security to property, all over the land from 
which both had been excluded for ages. ‘The rest which 
India so pined for, as the first condition of its regenera- 
tion, has been given to it. The value of the foundation 
thus laid for the revival of its material prosperity is incal- 
culable ; not less is the value of the check given to the 
decay of morality, to the dissolution of the bonds which 
bind society together, by the reéstablishment of order 
and public faith. While the elevation of the land by its 
own internal forces has thus been rendered possible, the 
way has been opened for the introduction into it from 
_ abroad of everything which is good. Knowledge of its 
present condition and past history has been spread out 
before the eyes of the world. It is indeed wonderful to 
contemplate the change in this respect which only fifty 
years have wrought. While the languages, manners, and 
institutions of India at the beginning of the present cent- 
ury were hardly known even in their latest forms, their 
development has now been traced up to a period in the 
past to which the annals or the traditions of hardly an- 
other people in the world reach back. This knowledge 
is one of the most important consequences flowing from 
the English conquest, for its value to the world, and for 


THE BRITISH IN INDIA. 39 


its value to India, as laying open the needs of the latter, . 
and showing how they may best be supplied. Not much ° 
more than this preparatory work, it is true, has yet been — 
accomplished for the restoration of the country ; but it is 
not reasonable to expect much more. Only forty years 
ago, the British were still engaged in the struggle to 
establish themselves; and although since that time they 
have been in peaceful possession of the country itself, fre- 
quent wars upon the frontier have engaged the energies 
and absorbed the resources of the government. Those 
who point to the immense works of internal improvement 
undertaken by some of the Mogul sovereigns, as a re- 
proach to the apathy and negligence of the British, for- 
get whence the means to pay for them were drawn, from 
heavy burdens levied upon a country yet unexhausted, 
from wholesale and pitiless plunder of vast regions just 
reduced to subjection; all India being laid under con- 
tribution for the benefit of the one district where the 
monarch had his residence. Those, again, who taunt the 
English with the insignificance of the amount expended 
in the instruction of the people, forget how hard it is for 
a government of an alien race, a different faith, and ideas 
and habits of mind so unlike those of its subjects, to make 
itself at once their teacher. Herein, indeed, lies the great 
difficulty of the position which the British hold in their 
eastern empire. It was comparatively easy for them to 
do what they have done, to redress the sorest of the evils 
under which the land labored, reinstating order and con- 
fidence in the place of anarchy and faithlessness ; but if 
there is any work which calls for the highest wisdom, 
prudence, and circumspection, it is the revival of a sunken 
civilization, the elevation of a debased national character. 
To carry out such a work, not less than the collective in- 
tellect of a nation, zealously and earnestly applied, can 
be sufficient. 

The main significance of the present revolt of the na- 


40 | THE BRITISH IN INDIA. 


tive army lies, to our apprehension, in its bearing upon 
this point, of the future relation of the English nation to 
its Indian subjects. Let us turn aside for a moment to 
consider the causes and character of the revolt. 

It is not to be supposed that an authority like that 
whose history we have been reviewing, established by 
force of arms, and by a strange nation, would be entirely 
acquiesced in by the whole people of India, whatever the 
benefits it conferred upon them, and however great a 
majority might have rejoiced in its extension over them. 
As the remembrance of the heavy yoke from which it 
brought deliverance became gradually fainter, and the, 
feeling of grateful relief vanished, an uneasy sense of the 
burden still remaining, a repugnance to the dominion, 
however lightly exercised, of a nation of strange color, 
religion, and manners, could not but by degrees usurp its 
place, even in the great body of the people. Much more 
must the Mohammedan, despising alike Hindu and 
Frank, regarding India as his own by the right of con- 
quest and of near eight centuries of unchecked oppres- 
sion, and as wrenched from his grasp by the English, feel 
the bitterness of vengeful hate towards the latter. Nor 
less would the deposed rulers, Nabobs, Rajahs, chiefs of 
"every kind, stripped of power, and retaining only the 
pomp and wealth of a mock dignity, long for a revolution 
which should place them again at the head of affairs. 
And the crowd of restless characters, old plunderers and 
banditti, who, though dispersed and repressed, had not 
been entirely destroyed, would be ready at the first op- 
portunity to join in the overthrow of order and authority. 

In spite of the constant ferment of these elements of 
disaffection, the vigilance and energy of the government, 
the weakness, isolation, and want of harmony of the mal- 
contents, rendered serious apprehension from them need- 
less. ‘There was another point, however, where lay at 
once the strength and the weakness of the British em- 


THE BRITISH IN INDIA. 41 


pire ; it reposed on military power, and the sword and 
the bayonets to which its keeping was confided were 
borne by native hands. From the very beginning of the 
British dominion, it had been the practice to train in the 
European discipline, and to officer with Englishmen, 
bodies of native troops, called sepoys. ‘The system had 
been marvelously successful ; no troops of the native pow- 
ers could stand against the British sepoys; they had 
been the main instruments by which British victories 
were won, and British empire extended. It was an age 
and a country of mercenary warfare, and these hirelings 
were attached to the flag under which they served by 
kind and considerate treatment, by the ascendancy of 
character of British officers, by some sense of the glory 
and success which attended their arms, and by liberal 
wages, of which the full and punctual payment was al- 
ways to be relied upon. The service was greedily sought ; 
the ranks were always full; desertion was unknown ; 
dismissal was itself a recognized punishment for grave 
offenses against’ discipline. Almost all the sepoys had 
families, which they were allowed from time to time to 
visit, and which were supported meanwhile by a stated 
portion of their pay, made over to them directly by the 
government authorities. After a certain term of service 
the sepoy was allowed a pension to the end of his life; 
and as everything in India has a strong tendency to be- 
come hereditary, so when the old veteran retired he was 
wont to send his son to take his place in the ranks. It 
seemed as if every possible means had been used to secure 
the fidelity of these troops, so to bind them, by affection 
and interest, to the British cause, that they might be 
trusted, even in the case of a rebellion; and they had 
shown themselves fully trustworthy, not only in danger- 
ous conflict, but also in popular outbreaks, which ap- 
pealed, it seemed, in the strongest manner to their sym- 
pathies. 


42, , THE BRITISH IN INDIA. 


While, however, the sepoys had been in most respects 
submissive and docile, there was one point upon which 
the government had always been compelled to consult 
and humor their prejudices —namely, upon matters con- 
nected with religion and caste. It was their weakness to 
entertain the suspicion that it was intended to convert 
them, all at once and against their will, into Christians. 
The feeling was not entirely unnatural: they were so un- 
der European influence and authority, the power of disci- 
pline was so great; they had been made into brave and 
orderly soldiers ; some mysterious process there might be 
which should change them into apostates. They looked 
with extreme jealousy upon any new regulation which 
seemed to trench in the most distant manner on the usages 
of caste. ‘These feelings were industriously fostered and 
artfully exaggerated by the malcontent classes. They had 
broken out once, in 1806, in the massacre of Vellore, as it 
is called —a mutiny remarkably like the present one in 
its causes and attendant circumstances, although upon a 
scale very much smaller. A number of trivial innovations 
had roused the sensitive suspicions of the sepoys, and led 
to general disaffection, treasonable communications, and 
mutterings of conspiracy. Finally, an order for the in- 
troduction of a turban of new shape, which seemed 
strongly to resemble a European cap, brought matters to 
a crisis. The government was obliged to retract and con- 
ciliate ; but it was too late to prevent the outbreak at one 
station, Vellore, near Madras: the garrison mutinied, 
murdered its officers, and committed horrible excesses. 
Help was near and promptly given, and the revolt was 
quelled without spreading further; but a little want of 
energy and prudence might have allowed a flame to 
kindle which would have threatened the utter extinction 
of the British authority, then only half established in 
India. 

Within the past few years, indications have not been 


THE BRITISH IN INDIA. 43 


wanting that the Bengal army was falling into a dan- 
gerous state of insubordination. ‘The long peace had 
loosened the bonds of discipline, the distance between the 
native corps and its English officers had become much 
greater than of old, and the command by the latter of the 
respect and attachment of their men was accordingly 
weakened ; little infringements of military discipline had 
been treated with a leniency which made the impression 
of weakness ; the whole body of native troops had swung 
away, in short, from the government, and stood apart as 
a separate power in the state ; the sepoy had become in- 
dolent, self-conceited, sensitive, almost openly mutinous ; 
insomuch even, that a year ago acute observers had per- 
suaded themselves that the whole system of management 
by which the British power was upheld was effete, and 
must be changed from the foundation. But the govern- 
ment foresaw nothing, took no precautionary measures, 
heeded not the smouldering disaffection. The spark 
which lighted the flame, as is well known, was the pro- 
posed issue of new cartridges with greased balls, which 
the sepoys were taught to believe had been smeared with 
the fat of cows and swine, so that in biting them, as is 
done in loading, the caste and the purity of Hindu and 
Mussulman might be destroyed together. Had the troops 
been in their old state of discipline, and as amenable to 
the influence of their officers, the trouble might speedily 
have been allayed; but it was not so. From the time 
when the first suspicions were aroused, the middle of 

January, 1857, for near four months, there were con- 
stantly recurring difficulties; suspicious communications 
were detected, conspiracies discovered, attempts at mur- 
der and plunder frustrated, and more than one regiment 
was broken and disbanded: On the tenth of May, at 
Meerut, forty miles east from Delhi, the mutiny burst out 
at last with uncontrollable fury ; and so unequal to the 
crisis were the officers at that station, that although it 


44 THE BRITISH IN INDIA. 


contained a British force even outnumbering the sepoys, 
the latter were suffered, after murdering their officers and 
committing fearful atrocities upon all Europeans, men, 
women, and children, that fell into their hands, to make 
their escape to the ancient Mohammedan capital hard by, 
and give to their movement, by the possession of that city 
and of the person of the emperor, the semblance of a 
national uprising. We cannot undertake to trace the 
progress of the mutiny, as the contagion spread from 
station to station, and from corps to corps, till of the 
great army of a hundred thousand trusty soldiers only 
the smallest remnant continued faithful; to describe the 
fearful suddenness of the rising, the suspicionless security 
of the victims, the sickening and heartrending outrages 
perpetrated by the mutineers, and the daring gallantry, 
worthy of the very best days of England, which her sons 
have shown in the unequal struggle they have since been 
maintaining. All these things are fresh in the remem- 
brance of every one, as eagerly gathered from the weekly 
accounts which have reached this country. We have 
here to deal rather with the character and the results of 
the outbreak. 

As regards its character, it is to be noted that all at- 
tempts to give it a grand significance, as the result of 
far-reaching intrigues, or of a deeply laid plot, as the ex- 
pression of the despair and vengeance of a nation, have 
been given over as futile. It is not the revolt of India 
against an oppression too heavy to be borne: excepting 
in the newly annexed and still unregulated province of 
Oude, the mutineers have met with sympathy and aid 
from only that part of the population which is the natural 
enemy of order; the country at large remains quiet, and 
is ready to help, so far as it dares, the fugitives who are 
seeking for shelter and succor; the sovereigns of the in- 
dependent and the dependent native states sympathize 
with the English, and not with their foes. It is nota 


THE BRITISH IN INDIA. 45 


deliberate uprising, brought about by special influences, 
and directed to a distinct object : the time of outbreak, its 
place, the want of concert, of leaders, of plan of opera- 
tions, indicate this beyond a question. Russian influence, 
that bugbear of a part of the British public, is not to be 
thought of; nor is there the least evidence that any de- 
posed sovereign, as the King of Oude, or the Emperor of 
Delhi, has been directly active in bringing about the 
movement — even if such have fallen in with it, or been 
forced to join it, when it was once in full career. It is 
simply that which we have described it, a mutiny; vast 
and terrible beyond any other which history records, it is 
true, but yet only a mutiny, the revolt of an army against 
its officers. The triviality of the causes which directly 
led to it, and the remarkable and appalling character of 
the circumstances by which it has been accompanied, add 
to its importance as an event an intense interest as an 
exhibition of Indian nature. It is strange to see how 
regiments loud and sincere, so far as can even now be 
judged, in professions of fidelity, even faithful in action, 
one day, have the next felt the infection of disloyalty. 
And what are we to think of the ferocious cruelty mani- 
fested in those deeds which have made the world shudder 
with horror and indignation? They were no work of 
maddened retaliation; the sepoys had ever been treated 
with kindness and consideration. Nor do they seem to 
have been deliberate, and for a purpose; it is possible, 
indeed, that a wish to anticipate the severe retribution 
which they knew would be made the penalty of their 
treason, that an impulse to bind themselves to mutual 
faithfulness by crimes which could never find forgiveness, 
that a desire to profane and degrade to the utmost in 
the eyes of the whole country the British authority, by 
devoting to shame and torture and death the women and 
children whom even Oriental fury 1s wont to spare, re- 
garding them as sacred, may have had some influence in 


46 | THE BRITISH IN INDIA. 


prompting to such atrocities. But we fear that they are 
yet more the spontaneous outbreak of ferocity in a char-— 
acter which passes at a bound from contented submission 
to the extreme of deadly hatred, the saddest evidence of 
what a thousand years’ reign of superstition, faithlessness, 
and oppression can do to efface the better lineaments of 
a, nature originally noble.! 

The immediate result of the mutiny is too plain to be 
mistaken: it is destined to be put down with a strong 
hand, and that right speedily. The sepoys have learned 
long ere this how sadly they have mistaken the sources 
of the strength in which they were trusting. Accus- 
tomed for a hundred years to constant victory under the 
British banner, they imagined they should be as invinci- 
ble when arrayed against it. The superiority of the 
British native troops over those trained and officered by 
men of other European nations had always been con- 
spicuous : now it appears how little even the discipline 
of the British sepoy can effect, when no longer directed 
by British intellect, and inspired with British courage 
and spirit. Since 1757, no more brilliant victories have 
been won by a few against a host than the last year has 
seen. The small number of English troops upon the 
spot have shown themselves able to hold in check, and 
even to make head against, the myriads of the mutineers. 
The old prestige of English superiority, which had al- 
ways been one of the most effective agencies in maintain- 
ing and extending English power in India, is fully reés- 
tablished. The reinforcements which have since reached 
the country will have turned the scale completely in their 
favor ; and before the next summer’s heat comes, ina 
will % as tranquil as two years ago. 

The remoter consequences are not so easy to foreanas 


1 It has been made to appear later that the accounts of Indian atrocities sent 
home during the mutiny were not a little exaggerated ; and the wholesale and 
undiscriminating severities by which they were requited have left a stain upon 
British civilization as well. 


THE BRITISH IN INDIA. 47 


but some of them may be even now distinctly read. 
Since the catastrophe is not like a great convulsion of 
nature, which alters permanently the features of a coun- 
try, but rather a storm which sweeps for a time with fury 
over its surface, and passing by leaves it to resume its 
former condition, there will be few conspicuous political 
changes following upon it. No new distribution of terri- 
tory will be made; the government will remain consti- 
tuted as before; even the sepoy army will have to be 
reconstructed, for England cannot afford the men, nor 
India the treasure, to keep on foot a sufficient European 
force. Yet we are persuaded that many and important 
changes will take place in the relations of the two coun- 
tries. In the very first rank of consequence is to be set 
the increased interest and attention with which those 
relations will be regarded by the British people. It has 
long been their reproach that they were too little heed- 
ful of their Indian empire, and of their responsibilities 
toward it; now their indifference is thoroughly broken 
down, and, we are certain, not for the moment only. 
During the past year more advance has been made by 
the public mind of England in the comprehension of all 
the great interests involved, than in twenty years before. 
This is precisely what was wanted to insure the faithful 
execution of that guardianship which she has assumed 
over India; and its consequences will soon appear in the 
new spirit of the Indian administration. Half measures 
will be cast aside: England will herself rule her eastern 
empire, not through the East India Company and in the 
name of the Great Mogul. She will not attempt longer 
to guide only the financial and political concerns of the 
country, letting its opinions and domestic institutions 
take care of themselves. She will deal with India more 
frankly as what it is, a semi-barbarous nation, conquered 
and governed by one of superior cultivation and endow- 
ments. While practicing the utmost toleration in matters 


48 | THE BRITISH IN INDIA. 


of religion, the government will not be afraid to assume 
its proper character as an enlightened and Christian gov- 
ernment, to encourage in all proper ways the spread of 
its own religion among its subjects, the spread of Euro- 
pean ideas, and knowledge, and manners in the land. 
The impolicy, as well as dishonor, of the position which 
it has hitherto occupied with regard to this matter, is 
now fully recognized. A host of erroneous views and 
- false principles of long standing have been cleared up 
and swept away by this revolt. The nature and strength 
of the hold which England has upon her Indian domin- 
ions is better appreciated. ‘The blow which for years has 
been dreaded and guarded against with the most sensitive 
anxiety, as destined, should it come, to lay her empire 
in the dust, has fallen, and it has not staggered her for a 
moment: she has never felt firmer in possession than 
during these past six months. The general justice, in- 
tegrity, and energy of her administration had grounded 
her influence throughout the country at large too securely 
to be shaken, even by such a whirlwind of defection on 
the part of those whom she had most trusted ang most 
sought to bind to her. 

England occupies at this moment a prouder position 
toward India than ever before in her history. We can- 
not but admire the political ability, and the moral and 
physical force, which could found so firmly, maintain so 
manfully, and reéstablish so speedily her authority over 
the hundred and eighty millions of her subjects or de- 
pendents in the East. It is also a position of more hope- 
ful promise than at any earlier period. ‘The spirit in 
which English sentiment has met the crisis is worthy of 
all praise and approval. It has manifested no less hu- 
mility than firmness; it recognizes as the cause of the 
calamity its own want of prudence and attention ; it is 
resolved to watch with more devoted care over its charge, 
for the best good of both. The future must show how 


THE BRITISH IN INDIA. 49 


these resolutions are kept, and with what result. The 
object to be striven after is the final regeneration of In- 
dia, the education of whatever capacities for good there 
are in her, and her restoration to the full capacity of self- 
government. ‘There is great danger of failure in the 
attempt to unite this object with the long guardianship 
which must precede it; danger of completing the de- 
struction of the national character, by taking away 
whatever of independence is left, and putting nothing 
better in its place. But so much as this is certain; no 
calamity could befall India so great as the withdrawal . 
at present of the British grasp upon her. She is in the 
hands of her friends ; we accept what they have wrought 
for her already, we accept the spirit which now animates 
them in the continuance of their work for her. We 
would wait and hope, we would study and help, that she 
may some time assume again among the nations of the 
earth the position to which she is entitled by her blood 
and by her ancient history. 


During the more than sixteen years which have now 
(1874) elapsed since the foregoing paragraphs were writ- 
ten, nothing has come to light in the relations between 
England and India which should cause them to be can- 
celed, or seriously altered. Direct control of the country 
by the English government was assumed by the Queen’s 
proclamation of November 1, 1858 ; and the whole out- 
ward form of administration, rather than its inward char- 
acter or its spirit, was thus changed. ‘There has followed 
a long period of peace and of the works of peace, during 
which all our anticipations of the progress of the country 
have been realized. The acquiescence of all classes and 
conditions in the British dominion has never been more 
complete and hearty. Immense public works have been 
executed by English skill and capital. Thousands of 

4 


50 : THE BRITISH IN INDIA. 


miles of railway have been carried across the land in all 
directions, and have exercised the same influence as in 
other stagnated communities: startling the minds of the 
people into greater activity and widening their knowledge 
and interest and sympathies, and giving accessibility and 
value to the productions of districts formerly isolated ; 
helping also thus to avert or break the dread visitations 
of famine which have always come, from time to time, 
upon a country so thickly populated, and living under 
such peculiar climatal conditions, as does India. The 
works also of irrigation and of water communication, by 
which the best rulers in the middle age of Indian history 
have now and then distinguished themselves, but which 
had all gone to decay in the anarchy of later times, before 
the British came upon the scene, have been in part re- 
stored, in part added to upon a vastly increased scale, 
and with the happiest results. New and important 
branches of agricultural industry have been introduced 
and nursed into prosperity. Educational interests have 
been liberally attended to; a vast system of schools of 
every degree, from the university down to the village 
pedagogue, is organized and growing in efficiency. In 
matters of religion and public morality there is a quiet 
but decided furtherance of what is better and repression 
of what is worse, without obtrusive meddling. Though 
fully opened to the permanent settlement of Europeans, 
the country has not become the resort of permanent 
immigrants, but only of men who come in for a time to 
manage enterprises in which English capital is invested. 
There is still no real mixing of the two races; the Euro- 
peans stand over against the natives, and even against the 
Eurasians, as those of mixed European and Asiatic blood 
are called, with far too much of that pride and haughty 
exclusion which characterize the Anglo-Saxon in his inter- 
course with races whom he deems inferior. Here is the 
weak point, where a change is most needed, and hardest 


THE BRITISH IN INDIA. 51 


to bring about. At the central points, the natives are 
rising in education and enlightenment, and movements 
toward the reform of their institutions are making some 
genuine internal progress— a progress, however, which 
is not marked by any general disposition toward the 
acceptance of Christianity: young India tends rather to 
the abandonment of all positive religion. But it is too 
early still to prophesy what is to be the result on the 
national character of causes now working ; we can only 
wish that those causes may long continue in operation, 
under the same eyer-improving management. 


A 
CHINA AND THE CHINESE. 


—o——— 


It is a singular circumstance,! which has not failed to 
attract remark, that the Atlantic cable seems to have 
been laid for no other practical end, so far as we on this 
side the ocean are concerned, than to let us know, a few 
days earlier than we should otherwise have learned it, 
that a treaty had been concluded with China by the two 
greatest European powers ; a treaty which promised the 
attainment, at last, of the purpose. of long years of 
peaceful diplomacy and warlike endeavor, in the laying 
open of that vast and populous empire to the knowledge 
of Europe, and the influence of European ideas. Cer- 
tainly, no other event of the century has had so costly 
and conspicuous an instrumentality provided for its an- 
nouncement. And although, in an age of cool-headed 
reason and contempt of omens like the present, we shall 
hardly be allowed to draw from this fact the inference 
that no other event of the century has been of the same 
importance to us, we may claim, without danger of seri- 
ous contradiction, that it stands prominently forward 
among the great events of the time, and that its bearings 
require to be carefully studied ; the more so, on account 
of the acknowledged difficulty of the subject. More 
discordant opinions than may be found recorded respect- 
ing China, the character of its people, the value of their 


1 The first transatlantic telegraphic cable was laid in August, 1858, and was 
disabled after a few days of imperfect service. 


CHINA AND THE CHINESE. 53 


institutions, their accessibility to trade, their capacity of 
adopting new ideas and new forms of social and political 
life, the possibility of their reception into the brother- 
hood of nations —if it be not impertinence in us, wrang- 
ling and mutually exclusive set that we are, to talk of 
our fraternity, and of admitting into it a member as big, 
and many times as old, as all the rest of us together — 
more discordant opinions than have been expressed upon 
such points as these, even by the well informed, it would 
not be easy to find put forth upon any other similar sub- 
ject. We by no means suppose that anything we can 
say will go far toward reducing this discordance to har- 
mony ; but we have a right to have our word upon what- 
ever the world is talking most about, whether it shall 
prove to be well said or ill said. Perhaps we may be 
able to bring forward facts, or present views, which will 
enable some minds to arrive at juster and clearer judg- 
ments than they would otherwise form respecting the 
Celestial Empire and its inhabitants. 

We candidly warn our readers, at the outset, that we 
feel a strong inclination to side with the Chinese in their 
present difference with the rest of mankind, so far as a 
regard for the rights of the case shall not forbid it. We 
desire to take the most favorable view that we can of all 
that concerns them ; to allow them credit for whatever 
is justly their due, and to look with compassion and in- 
dulgence upon their, shortcomings and faults; to place 
ourselves, in short, in as close sympathy with them as 
shall be found possible. Various potent considerations 
move us to this. Feelings of gratitude, in the first place, 
are not without their effect upon us. Who can sit over 
that cup, of all cups the most social and cheering, and 
the most harmless withal, and not feel within him a 
warm glow of something like affectionate good-will 
toward a country which has given, and which alone con- 


54 | CHINA AND THE CHINESE. 


tinues to supply,! such a gift to man and womankind ? 
Can that part of earth’s surface, after all, be truly said 
to have cut itself off from community with the rest, from 
contributing intimately and efficiently to their pleasures, 
which in so many and so widely scattered homes fills the 
steaming urn with its enlivening beverage? What shall 
we say, further, of silk and porcelain, as contributions to 
the material comfort of the race? We will not insist 
too strongly upon the Chinese inventions of the mariner’s 
compass, gunpowder, and the art of printing, since, 
while some of them may be claimed to have done nearly 
as much mischief as good in the world, we cannot trace 
their origin, as possessions of our own, directly and cer- 
tainly back to China. But a country which has bestowed 
upon mankind silk, porcelain, and tea, we might almost 
regard as having done its fair part, and allow to build up 
as high a fence as it pleased about itself, even at the risk 
of shutting out much sunlight, and to be happy within 
in its own chosen way. 

Again, we cannot help feeling a great respect and 
admiration for a country which has had such a history as 
China. The remarkable character of the spectacle it 
presents among the nations of the earth is not seldom 
remarked upon, but cannot be too often or too impres- 
sively called to notice. China was one people and one 
kingdom a thousand years before that dim and _half- 
mythical period when the Greek heroes led their follow- 
ers to the siege of Troy, and it has maintained ever since, 
unbroken, the identity of its language, its national char- 
acter, and its institutions. What changes, what over- 
turnings and reconstructions, has not every other part of 
the world had to undergo during that interval of four 
thousand years! There alone upon the earth’s face does 
stability seem to have reigned, while revolution has been 


1 Less exclusively, to be sure, now than fifteen years ago, when this para- 
graph was written. 


CHINA AND THE CHINESE. 55 


elsewhere the normal order of things. We say deliber- 
ately stability, not inaction. China has known-during all 
that time as constant action, often as violent commotion 
as other countries, and in many respects not less real 
progress ; had it been stagnant only, had there not been 
in it a healthy vital action, it must long since have per- 
ished in inanity and putrescence: but, far from that, 
China has seen within the last two hundred years one of 
its happiest and most prosperous periods. Here is a 
problem for the student of history of which the interest 
cannot easily be overstated. How have the Chinese suc- 
ceeded in finding and maintaining the stable equilibrium 
which other races have vainly sought? Is it in their 
character, or their peculiar external circumstances, or in 
the wisdom with which they have harmonized the two, 
that their strength has lain? As we look upon this ven- 
erable structure, the sole survivor of all the fabrics of 
empire reared by the hands of the men of olden time, 
we can hardly help wishing that it might have been left 
to stand until it should fall of itself ; that the generations 
to come might have seen whether it yet retained enough 
of the recuperative energies which had repeatedly raised 
it from an estate far lower than that into which it was 
seeming now to have fallen, to give it a renewed lease of 
its old life, a return to its ancient prosperity and vigor. 
That is now no longer possible. China was able, by the 
force of her superior gifts and culture, to overbear and 
assimilate the wild tribes of the northern and western 
deserts, her only conquerors hitherto: but now an ele- 
ment is forcibly introduced into the workings of her his- 
tory which cannot be thus dealt with, which must either 
leaven or destroy her. 

This is another, and a principal reason, why we feel 
impelled to plead the cause of the Chinese. They are 
undergoing subjection to an influence which is irresistible, 
and of which the effect upon their own national pros- 


56 | CHINA AND THE CHINESE. 


perity, and even existence, is, to say the least, extremely 
doubtful. . All the power of the West is arrayed together 
against them, and they are but as infants in the hands of us 
wise, daring, and rapacious children of Europe, armed with 
the terrible engines of destruction which our ingenuity has 
supplied to our combativeness. ‘They must needs yield ; 
it is only a question -of time, of the forbearance or the 
mutual jealousies of their antagonists. And does the 
right of the question le so entirely upon our side as we 
are ready to persuade ourselves? For whose advantage 
is it that the Western world is striving to break its way 
into China? Primarily, of course, for its own, and not 
for that of the Chinese. We want more of their silk, 
their tea, their thousand articles of pleasant and profitable 
trade ; and we do not wish to pay for these in hard cash, 
making only one profit; we desire that they in turn 
should buy what we have to sell. To be sure, we also 
maintain that China will be the gainer by thus dealing 
with us. Free trade, brotherhood of nations, spread of 
civilization, are not these the universal regenerators, the 
forerunners of the millennium of culture? Are not we 
vastly richer, stronger, braver, more virtuous, more en- 
lightened, more progressive, than these poor Chinese ? 
Do we not know that they are fools and blind, and have 
everything to learn of us? But if we say yes to all this, 
the question is still by no means settled. The Chinese 
themselves dislike and fear us, and their opinion should 
not go for nothing in a matter which so nearly concerns 
them. It is so convenient and easy for us to assume that 
they are unjust both to us and to themselves in shutting 
their borders. against us, that we ought to be very sure 
that it is really so before we break down the barrier. Our 
assumption may savor of that comfortable philosophy 
which maintains ! that the African race is to be exalted to 
Christianity and civilization by association in the capacity 
1 That is, which in 1859 still maintained this. 


CHINA AND THE CHINESE. 5T 


of bond-servant with its superiors. The exclusiveness of 
China is no immemorial policy ; it is comparatively a re- 
cent measure of precaution, suggested and enforced by 
experience ; it may yet prove to have been prompted by 
the instinct of self-preservation. The history of the past 
few centuries affords more than one melancholy spectacle 
of the ruin and annihilation of a race by contact with a 
higher civilization, which it was itself incapable of adopt- 
ing. It is upon our heavy responsibility if we crowd 
ourselves, with all our superior wisdom and virtue, upon 
a resisting people ; and if Chinese nationality goes down 
in consequence of it, if the race that has maintained itself 
for four thousand years in such general contentment and 
prosperity as no other race on earth has known hastens 
to swift decay and extinction, our guilt will be great in- 
deed. 

We do not assert that this is to be the unfortunate re- 
sult of our more intimate relations with China; we hope 
the contrary ; but we do claim that the possibility of it 
requires to be taken fully into account. We believe that 
there is not a little ignorance and arrogance in the popu- 
lar estimate of the Chinese and of the value of their civil- 
ization, and somewhat of selfish inconsiderateness in the 
plans formed respecting them. We hold that, in virtue 
_ of what they have been and still are, they deserve to be 
treated with more forbearance and generosity than has 
been wont to be exhibited toward them by the West; 
that their own welfare ought to be more carefully and 
more intelligently considered in all the dealings with 
them of the more enlightened nations. To this end we 
desire to contribute our mite by a view of the Chinese 
character, as exhibited in the history of China, its native 
institutions, and its relations with the rest of the world. 

The history, religion, and polity of China, more than 
that of any other country in the world, centre in a single 
individual — in the sage Confucius. No man ever stamped 


Boll CHINA AND THE CHINESE. 


his impress more thoroughly upon the character of a 
whole nation; perhaps none who ever lived has affected 
more powerfully the fates of a greater number of his 
fellow-beings. If we are to solve aright the problem of 
the Chinese nature and its development in history, it 
must be, in great measure, by comprehending the great 
Chinese philosopher, his relation to the times that pre- 
ceded, his influence upon the times that followed him. 
We can find no better vantage-ground for taking a survey 
of the Chinese character and history than is afforded us 
by his life and doctrines. 

Kong-tse, or Kong-fu-tse, ‘the Sage of the Family of 
Kong,’ was born in the year 551 B. C., which is very 
nearly the same date with that cornet assigned to the 
appearance of the no less famous Hindu teacher, Buddha. 
China was at that period broken up into a number of 
petty feudatory kingdoms, which owed but a nominal sub- 
mission to the central authority, and were engaged in per- 
petual quarrels with one another. The political condition 
of the country was sad enough, and, in sympathy with it, 
the bands of social and moral order were also relaxed. Con- 
fucius felt keenly the evil character of the times in which 
his life had been cast, and devoted himself with deliberate 
purpose to the work of reform. Being called, as all of his 
genius and learning invariably are called in China, to 
high political office, he tried first, as chief minister of his 
native state, the little kingdom of Lu, in the present 
province of Shan-tung, what he could accomplish by 
personal interference in the affairs of state. Soon dis- 
couraged, however, by the little success which rewarded 
his efforts, he withdrew into private life, and set himself 
to infuse into the sum of affairs a leaven which should 
spread and work through all China, for all time, produc- 
ing, by an organic process, those results which no effort 
of his single administrative arm could bring about. In 
this, his success was complete. His instructions were 


CHINA AND THE CHINESE. ' 59 


eagerly resorted to, and he soon saw about him a band, 
we are told, of three thousand disciples. The affection 
and reverence with which he inspired them were un- 
bounded, and, through them, his influence soon began to 
be powerfully felt all over the land. He died B. c. 479, 
at the age of seventy-three ; but he left works, compiled 
or composed by himself, to represent his doctrines, and 
his school long survived him, working on in his spirit, 
promulgating and expounding them. His influence went 
on steadily increasing; his own works, and those of his 
nearest disciples and their followers, became by degrees 
the moral and political bible of the nation, the fountain 
of wisdom, the rule of virtuous and useful conduct. Suc- 
cessive dynasties vied with one another in paying honors 
to his memory; the whole educated class, the aristocracy 
of China, took him for their patron and model. He has 
at this day nearly six hundred temples in the different 
provinces of the empire, in which, at stated seasons, 
reverential honors, of a kind to be more particularly de- 
scribed hereafter, are paid to his memory. And it should 
be particularly observed that all these honors have been 
and are paid to the actual Confucius himself, and for 
what he really was and did; not to any distorted and 
glorified image of him, enthroned in the popular mind, 
and become the recipient of a worship which understands 
neither itself nor its object. The difference in this re- 
spect between Confucius and the great teachers and re- 
formers of other lands is not a little striking and signifi- 
cant. Thus, to cite but an instance or two, the Persians - 
soon made of their Zoroaster a being of supernatural 
gifts, who in person fought with the powers of darkness, 
and held converse with the Supreme Being. Thus the 
Indian monk, Buddha, underwent a yet more wondrous 
transformation; his life, as related by his followers, is 
filled ad nauseam with preposterous marvels, while his 
doctrines have been so changed, and perverted, and over- 


60 | CHINA AND THE CHINESE. 


laid, that their identity is almost utterly lost: neither the 
Buddha nor the Buddhism of the modern Buddhists has 
any fair title to the name. But Confucius has no more 
been'a subject of mythical and legendary history to the 
Chinese than Washington to us; he is a man, whose birth, 
life, opinions, acts, writings, are plainly on record, and 
incapable of misapprehension. ‘The Chinese have treated 
him in the spirit of his own character. No one was ever 
more free from pride, from arrogant assumption of au- 
thority, from pretensions to superhuman wisdom, than 
was Confucius. He would not even lay claim to origi- 
nality ; he professed to be only a reverent student of the 
past, and a restorer of the principles and practices of the 
olden and golden time. This is the key-note of his 
whole philosophy. To extract from the past all that it 
contained which was best and worthiest of imitation, to 
combine it into a system of precepts of wise and right- 
eous conduct, and to urge it by every available argument 
upon the acceptance and observance of the nation — this, 
and this alone, was what he attempted. 

How well Confucius comprehended the work he had to 
perform, and how wisely he chose his means for its ac- 
complishment, the result bears him witness. We cannot 
refrain from comparing him here with one of his own 
contemporaries, the sage Lao-tse, also one of the most 
eminent men whom China: has ever produced. He, too, 
felt and mourned over the corruption of the times, and 
endeavored in his own way to set bounds to it, and to re- 
store men to virtue. But his method was an altogether 
independent and original one. He was a transcendental 
philosopher, and had arrived at the apprehension of an 
absolute, spiritual, impersonal being, the cause and prin- 
ciple of the universe, to which he gave the name of Tao, 
‘the Way ;’ and he taught that by intimate recognition of 
this being, and spiritual union with it, through the means 
of the negation of whatever constitutes the nature and 


CHINA AND THE CHINESE. 61 


attributes of man, were to be attained virtue and its 
consequence, happiness. Lao-tse gave origin to a school, 
or sect, which is not yet extinct. The ‘religion of Tao” 
has at times enjoyed a wide popularity throughout China, 
and the countenance and patronage of its rulers; and it 
is still counted as one of the three creeds said to divide 
the homage of the Chinese people: yet not in its original 
form, as a mystical philosophy; it has been for long 
centuries corrupted into a low form of idolatrous supersti- 
tion and necromancy, and its priests and adherents are 
justly held in contempt by all the more enlightened of 
the people. Thus the system of Lao-tse, which was not 
deeply based upon the national character, and met with 
no genuine response from the national mind, was doomed, 
despite the genius of its founder, to corruption and virtual 
extinction ; while the philosophy of Confucius. so closely 
adapted itself to the wants and the capacities of.the 
nation, that it commanded and attained. universal accept- 
ance. Indeed, we know not how to characterize Con- 
fucius more summarily and more truly. than by saying 
that he is the representative man.of China, the highest 
exponent of the national character in its best normal 
development. ; 

Hence it is that the great philosopher is, as it were, 
the focus of Chinese history ; all the culture and wisdom 
of the past centre in him, and from him they radiate 
upon the centuries to come. It is even true that almost 
all the records which have come down. to us of the early 
history of China, the relics which we have received of its 
ancient literature, owe to him the form in which they 
have been preserved, and to his sanction their preserva- 
tion itself. Of the five canonical works, the. King, 
which stand at the head of the Chinese literature, three 
were compiled, and one composed by him. The founda- 
tion-text of the first, the I-King, or ‘ Book of Changes,’ 
is ascribed by tradition to the mythical Emperor. Fu-hi. 


62 3 CHINA AND THE CHINESE. 


It is simply a number of figures made up of straight lines, 
entire and broken, variously put together in parallel 
arrangement. ‘These are regarded as typifying the ele- 
ments and processes of nature, and the great truths of the 
moral and intellectual world; in them the earliest cosmi- 
cal philosophy of the Chinese was pleased to find its ex- 
pression. To the brief interpretation of these emblematic 
figures by the earliest founders (1100 B. c.) of the 
dynasty under which he himself lived, Confucius added 
his own fuller explication. It tells of the reverence of 
Confucius for what long tradition had hallowed, that he 
accepted such a text for his philosophy: his own straight- 
forward common sense would never of itself have led him 
to so fantastic an invention. Again, the early ages of 
China, like those of other primitive nations, had not 
failed to produce popular lyric poetry. And it is curi- 
ously characteristic of the elaborate system of polity by 
which the affairs of the nation were regulated even at so 
remote a period, that the provincial governors had long 
had it for their duty to collect the lyrics which sprang up 
in their respective provinces, and to send them to the cap- 
ital, as evidences of the state of opinions and morals pre- 
vailing among the people: it is clearly no modern discoy- 
ery that the songs of a people are the most faithful 
reflection of the popular sentiments. From the material 
thus assembled, and from the mass of like material other- 
wise placed within his reach, Confucius selected three 
hundred and eleven pieces, being those which he deemed 
most valuable and worthy of preservation, and combined 
them to form the Shi-King, ‘the Canon of Songs:’ all 
' the rest have since perished. The third canonical book, 
the Shu-King, is the most important of all. It is a work 
of historical character, yet by no means a chronicle of 
events alone; it is rather a record of the wisdom and 
virtue of the past; itis made up for the most part of the 
conversations, the counsels, the decrees, the institutions of 


CHINA AND THE CHINESE. 63 


the sovereigns of ancient China. It claims to be derived 
from authentic annals, and must, at any rate, represent 
the traditional belief of the Chinese at that period re- 
specting the men and deeds of their country’s early his- 
tory. The record is brought down to a time about two 
hundred years before that of Confucius himself. As its 
continuation to his own period, the philosopher himself 
composed the Chun-tsieu, ‘Spring and Autumn,’ a brief 
historical compendium, which ranks as the fourth of the 
canonical books, and is the only work in our possession 
which comes directly from the mind and hand of Con- 
fucius: so faithful was he to his own idea of his mission, 
as the interpreter and mouth-piece of the past, and so lit- 
tle did he put forward his own personality in connection 
with his work. The fifth of the canonical books is the 
Li-Ki, or ‘ Book of Rites,’ a compilation brought into its 
present form some centuries after Confucius, and made up 
from material of very different age and character, but a 
text-book especially of ceremonial and etiquette. An im- 
portant place in it is occupied by the personal teachings of 
Confucius himself. The doctrines of the great philoso- 
pher are likewise exhibited in the Sze-shu, or Four Clas- 
sics, which emanated from his school during the course of 
the first centuries after his death, and which, together 
with the five King, make up the sacred literature of the 
Chinese people. 

As the Confucian philosophy is thus essentially a digest 
of the wisdom of the past, it will be well, instead of pro- 
ceeding toa direct consideration of its character and im- 
port, to turn back and contemplate rather the past out of 
which it sprang. 

The origin of the Chinese people is to be sought — if it 
be possible ever to trace back their movements beyond 
the limits of their own territory —in the northwest. The 
mountains of the southwest are yet occupied by wild 
tribes of another race, which perhaps once possessed the 


64 | CHINA AND THE CHINESE. 


whole country. The earliest history of China has for its 
theatre only the northern and. northwestern provinces. 
The great event with which its authentic history is gen- 
erally regarded as commencing is the success of Yu the 
Great, the founder of the first clearly historical dynasty, 
that of the Hia, in damming the furious waters of the 
Great Yellow River, the Hoang-ho, and rescuing its im- 
mense and fertile valley, still the richest and most popu- 
lous part of the empire, from inundation and waste. Yu 
is said to have commemorated his great work by an in- 
scription cut upon the face of a mountain that overlooks 
the valley ; of this inscription a copy still exists, which is 
by high authority pronounced unquestionably authentic. 
The date of the event is variously estimated. at from 
2200 to 2000 B. c. Its nature, andthe employment in 
recording it-of a written character radically akin with 
that still in use, prove that even at that early period. the 
Chinese nation was no mere aggregate of -wandering 
tribes, but at least beginning to be a great, powerful, and 
well ordered state, and that it had already passed through 
no very brief history of growth in knowledge, arts, and 
institutions.. There are, unquestionably, elements of his- 
toric truth in the traditional accounts of the dynasties 
preceding the Hia, although largely mingled with my- 
thological and cosmogonical legends : to their emperors are 
ascribed the first constitution of society, the invention of 
the useful arts, and the like. Conspicuous.among these 
founders of the Chinese state and culture are Fu-hi and 
Hoang-ti; the two latest of them, Yau and Shun, find a 
place.in the. earliest, half-legendary accounts of the Shu- 
King. It is not necessary for us to go into any detail re- 
specting the external history, of the first dynasties. The 
Hia maintained itself upon the throne for about two hun- 
dred and fifty years, and then gave place to the Shang; 
this, in its turn, lasted nearly six hundred and fifty years, 
when. the. weakness and tyranny. of its princes, andthe 


‘CHINA AND THE CHINESE. 65 


unhappiness of the people under their rule, caused the 
revolution which placed upon the throne the heroic Wu- 
Wang, chief ‘of the illustrious house of Chau. This em- 
peror and his father are two of the brightest examples of 
wise and good rulers which ancient Chinese history af- 
fords, and are among those oftenest held up by Confu- 
cius to’ the admiration and imitation of posterity. They 
committed, however, the capital political error of divid- 
ing the empire into feudal provinces, of which’ the rulers 
received, or soon acquired, too much independent power 
to consist with due subordination to the imperial author- 
ity; and the result became, during the six centuries which 
intervened between the establishment of the dynasty and 
the manhood of Confucius, that disturbed and anarchi- 
eal condition of the country which, as above stated, called 
out his efforts at reform. 

It is evident that, at the period of their great philoso- 
pher, the Chinese nation had passed through a history 
abundantly long enough for the full development of a 
national character, the growth of a creed, the establish- 
ment of a system of polity. Indeed, at the epoch of Yu 
the Great himself, the Chinese were, in all probability, 
essentially the same as they have ever since remained, 
and that persistency and stability which have always dis- 
tinguished them in so marked a manner were even then 
beginning to find scope for their exercise in the mainte- 
nance of past conditions. 

Physical ethnologists reckon the Chinese as belonging. 
to the race called Mongolian. ‘That is, however, a classifi- 
cation of them which is of little value, as indicating their 
actual origin and relationship ; for, by the language which 
they speak, they are severed by a deep gulf from all 
other people on the face of the earth. ‘The general char- 
acter of this language is well known to almost every one ; 
it is a language of monosyllables, a root-language, as we 
may call it, an undeveloped form of human speech, giv- 

: 


es pi CHINA AND THE CHINESE. 


ing in each of its words only the central, the radical idea, 
and lacking the whole apparatus of derivative and inflect- 
ive syllables, which, in their infinite variety of form and 
use, make up an important part of the mechanism of 
all other known tongues. Order of collocation, and the 
requirements of the sense, as gathered from the totality 
of the sentence, are in Chinese obliged to do the whole 
-work of declension and conjugation, and even, in great 
_ mneasure, of the distinction of parts of speech. As an 
ifistrument and aid of human thought, then, it is of all 
known languages the most unmanageable, the most defect- 
ive and insufficient. Yet, such is the power of the mind 
independent of, and over, the means of its expression, 
that this imperfect language has served the ends of a cul- 
tivated and thinking people throughout its whole history, 
has conveyed far nobler and profounder views and reason- 
ings than the greater part of the multitude of inflective 
dialects spoken by men — dialects strong in their capacity 
of being applied to high uses, weak in the ignorance and 
feebleness of the minds which should so apply them. 
The whole vocabulary of the Chinese spoken language is 
made up of only about five hundred syllables, each consti- 
tuting a word ; although this number is virtually more than 
doubled by the use of different tones of utterance, which 
give the syllables a distinction of meaning. The written 
language is vastly more complicated: a written language 
in truth it is, an auxiliary to the spoken, instead of being 
_its reflection merely. The Chinese, like all the other modes 
of writing of which the history is traceable back to its 
origin, began with rude pictorial representations of visible 
objects, with hieroglyphics; but, instead of passing by 
degrees into a phonetic alphabet, it adapted itself ingen- 
iously to the peculiar needs of the language which it was 
to represent, and, by combining in its characters a pho- 
netic and an ideographic element, and bringing forth an 
immense variety of combinations, it was able to remedy 


CHINA AND THE CHINESE. 67 


in part the defects of the spoken tongue; the relations 
of the separate ideas, indeed, it could not represent, but 
it could relieve the ambiguity arising from the host of 
different significations of which each word, as pronounced, 
admitted. Thus, for a language of five hundred words, 
there is an alphabet of which the characters are counted 
by tens of thousands. Yet only a small part of these, of 
course, are in constant and familiar use. Dr. Williams’s 
dictionary, one of the latest and most practically useful, 
gives about eight thousand, as supplying all ordinary 
needs, and even enabling one to read much of the litera- 
ture. The style of writing the character has varied 
greatly at different epochs, and several forms of it, as 
employed for different purposes, are even now in use. 

In the character of the language, as thus described, we 
find two of the distinguishing features which belong to 
everything that is Chinese: in the first place, an ex- 
ceeding simplicity, amounting even to poverty, of means, 
material, first principles, combined with an astonishing 
ingenuity and variety in their development and appli- 
cation ; and in the second place, a not less remarkable 
stability. ‘The Chinese is in great measure exempt from 
the working of those alterative processes which are so 
active in other languages; its stiff monosyllables admit 
neither composition nor mutilation; they are exposed 
only to the slow modifying effects of euphonic laws: 
and hence it has undergone less alteration, during the 
four thousand years of its traceable history, than many 
another living language in four hundred years. 

The religion of the ancient Chinese was of the same 
simplicity as their language; and it, too, seems to be pre- 
served to us from the earliest period, unchanged as to‘all 
its essential features, in that body of rites and cbsery- 
ances which is wont to be called the state religion, to- 
gether with one important and prominent popular cultus. 
the homage paid in each family to the ancestors. Like 


68 CHINA AND THE CHINESE. 


many other of the primitive religions of the world, it was 
a worship of the powers of nature. In virtue of its char- 
acter, it is fairly entitled to be called a religion. It 
was no mere superstition, no expression of a timorous 
dread of the powers of evil, seeking refuge in a cringing 
and deprecatory homage rendered to them; it was the 
outpouring of a genuine religious feeling, the offering in 
admiring awe, and gratitude, and trust, to the supposed 
rulers of the universe, of a worship which exalted and 
benefited the worshiper. It was, indeed, to a remarka- 
ble degree, free from the features which disfigure so many 
of the ancient religions ; it was free from idolatry, from 
all cruel and bloody rites, from all taint of vicious and 
lustful indulgence; its ceremonies were of a purity and 
simplicity almost unexampled. Yet even these its virtues 
were in part the result of the unideal nature of the 
Chinese, and of the feebleness and lack of vital energy of 
religious sentiment which has always distinguished them. 
The native Chinese religion can hardly be said to have 
had a history; it has remained stationary at a stage 
which in other religions has been but the first of a long 
course of development. The chief objects of its adora- 
tion were heaven and earth, and the sun and moon. 
Now these natural objects have been the germs of the 
principal divinities of many another ancient religion ; 
but almost everywhere their original identity has been 
lost in the personal deities which have grown out of 
them, hidden by the mythology of which these have been 
made the subject. But the Chinese religion never pro- 
duced any mythology ; it can hardly be said to have had 
any personal gods; the nation had a devout sense of an 
overruling power, or powers, under the supreme govern- 
ment and direction of which the affairs of the world went 
on, and devoutly and decorously they paid it their hom- 
age: but this was all. ‘The weakness of their sense of 
personal relation to the Deity, and individual duty grow- 


CHINA AND THE CHINESE. 69 


ing out of that relation, the comparative insignificance of 
the element of religion in the general sum of the affairs 
of life, is further evidenced by the fact that neither order 
nor class of priesthood ever grew up among them, charged 
with the ministry of divine things, and that the offering 
of worship became an affair of state, the performance of 
the religious rites of the nation the business of the civil 
authorities. The object of highest worship, heaven, 
might be addressed only by the Emperor himself; it was 
high treason for any one less exalted to offer solemn sac- 
rifice to the Supreme Ruler ; and each successive order of 
officials below him had likewise, in virtue of its official 
_ position, religious services to perform, at stated seasons, 
to the divinities of lower rank. 

One class of religious rites, however, eeinetas in the 
hands of the people at large. . It is well known to all 
who have made any study of early religions, how often 
the almost universal primitive belief in immortality takes 
such a form as leads to a kind of worship of deceased an- 
eestors. Their. departed spirits are supposed to have 
entered upon a new life, which in many respects is a 
counterpart of the old one; they still own the ties and 
feel the wants of their earthly existence ; they maintain 
intercourse with their living descendants, and are able 
to confer blessings upon them, while they are also acces- 
sible to their pious attentions, and even in a measure de- 
_ pendent upon them for support in the world of shadows. 
Such was the belief also of the earliest Hindus,! a race 
the most widely removed from the Chinese in place, 
origin, and character ; and the pious Brahman still holds 
monthly the ancestral feast, at which the fathers are in- 
vited to assemble and partake of the food set forth for 
them, although it is with him only a dead ceremony, in- 
herited from the remote past, while his own present be- 
lief has assumed a form with which such rites are wholly 


1 See the preceding volume, Article II., the ‘‘ Vedic doctrine of a future life.” 


70 . CHINA AND THE CHINESE. 


inconsistent. But this ancestral worship has nowhere 
else attained to such prominent importance as a part of 
the national religion as in China; it even constituted, 
and still constitutes, almost the only religious observance 
of the common people ; and one which no decay of belief, 
no importation of foreign creeds, no upspringing of super- 
stitious rites, has been able to displace. Every family 
has its ancestral altar: with the rich, this has a separate 
building allotted to it; with the poorer, it occupies a 
room, a closet, a corner, a shelf. There the commemo- 
rative tablets are set up, and there, at appointed times, 
are presented offerings of meats, fruits, flowers, apparel, 
money. But this part of the Chinese religion has also its 
public and official side. Although, in general, the ances- 
tors of each family are the care of their own particular 
descendants, and not of strangers, yet an exception is 
made in the case of those who have been benefactors of 
the whole nation: distinguished philosophers and states- 
men, patriots who have given their lives for their country, 
are in a manner canonized by having their memorial tab- 
lets removed from the privity of the family mansion, set 
up in public temples, and honored with official worship. 
Of this character, and of a prominence befitting his high 
rank and desert, is the homage paid to the sage Con- 
fucius. | 

The form of the Chinese polity was patriarchal; the 
state was an expansion of the family. The latter was 
both its model and its composing element; the individ- . 
uals of whom the state was made up were heads of fam- 
ilies. Neither age, nor property, nor wisdom, conferred 
political rights. So long as the father lived, the son was 
a minor ; he was incapable even of acquiring real estate, 
or executing a contract, without the consent of the father, 
expressed in due form. Heads of families, associated to- 
gether according to neighborhood, formed the primary 
political assemblies ; and to them, or to their combina- 


CHINA AND THE CHINESE. 71 


tion into secondary organizations, or to the officers freely 
elected by them, were committed many and important 
functions of administration. This, however, was not 
in virtue of an established constitution, or ‘compact be- 
tween the nation and its rulers; neither the theory nor 
the practice of the Chinese recognized any such. They 
had devised no fine hypotheses respecting the constitu- 
tion of a state, respecting the rights of the individual, 
and the checks and balances necessary to maintain them ; 
“they knew of no national order different from that of the 
family. As the family is a natural community, having 
for its head the father, not by any election or convention, 
but by the very nature of things, so the nation is a nat- 
ural community, of which the Emperor is the head; as 
reverence and implicit submission are due from children 
to a parent, so also the same are to be paid, with no 
abatement, by all the members of the national family, to 
its father and head. ‘The Emperor is, as he is styled, the 
Son of Heaven. He derives his authority directly from 
the Supreme Ruler. As he owes his place to no election, 
he is limited by no human statute. He is the source of 
all honor and all authority throughout his empire ; his 
word is law. By technical definition, then, the Chinese 
government is a despotism; and yet it would be unjust 
to stigmatize it by that term, as ordinarily understood by 
us. For, in the first place, as regards the theory of the 
state, the Chinese by no means held that it existed in the 
Emperor, and was to be administered for his benefit, the 
people being his vassals and slaves. ‘They believed, no 
less than we, that governments exist for the benefit of 
the governed. Their system demanded of the Emperor 
the strictest devotion to the welfare and happiness of his 
subjects. He was not exempted from the binding force of 
any of the principles of morality and justice which were 
made obligatory upon the private individual. Heaven 
had made him, it is true, the father of his people, giving 


72 } CHINA AND THE CHINESE. 


him unlimited dominion over them; yet for their good, 
that he might be their father indeed, and might make his 
children happy and prosperous. It is easy for us to say 
that this moral obligation is but a weak restraint, and 
that despotic power will and must be abused. The Chi- 
nese have learned that, too, and by sore experience. 
And yet this experience has never taught them that 
their system was radically defective, and required amend- 
“ment. Over and over again has China passed through 
frightful convulsions, in its endeavors to rid itself of a 
corrupt and tyrannous dynasty; but never, so far as we 
are aware, has it made the attempt, by limitation of 
authority, by the imposition of checks and the exaction 
of guarantees, to guard against further tyranny. Con- 
tent with the ancient constitution, not even imagining 
the possibility of a different one, the nation has sought 
only to place its administration in better hands. 

But there have not been wanting, in the Chinese sys- 
tem, elements of which the practical working has op- 
erated powerfully to check tyranny, and to soften the 
hard features of absolute power. In the first place, the 
absence of all disposition, on the part of either the gov- 
ernors or the governed, to find fault with the established 
order of things, introduce innovations, encroach upon one 
another’s prerogatives, has tended at least to promote tran- 
quillity. Again, no people in the world have ever been 
more orderly and methodical, more attached to ancient 
institutions, more unpliable to new ways, than the Chi- 
nese. The laws and methods of administration of their 
great empire became very early an immense and elabo- 
rate system, which grew more stable and rigid with 
every century of its existence, and which no Emperor, no 
dynasty even, was able essentially to alter. The will of 
the Emperor was law, it is true; but it was greatly ham- 
pered in its exercise by the stiff and unwieldy apparatus 
of councils, and boards, and courts, through which it was 


CHINA AND THE CHINESE. fd 


compelled to act. Nor was it possible for the sovereign 
to win a class or a caste to his personal support, and to 
fill all offices: with his creatures. Of classes and castes 
there were none; neither rank, nor dignity, nor author- 
ity were hereditary. If it were desired, in recompense 
of extraordinary merit, to extend to the family of the 
meritorious individual the favors shown to himself, the 
Chinese have always been used to confer dignity, not on 
his descendants, but upon his ancestors: an ingenious and 
happy device, which it is unfortunate that: western na- 
tions have not imitated. Surely, an aristocracy is not 
necessary to the stability of the institutions of a country, 
if the most populous empire in the world has been able 
to subsist for four thousand years without a noble. The 
Chinese officials do indeed form a terrible bureaucracy, 
uplifted above the heads of the people in virtue of the del- 
egation to their hands of part of the heaven-derived au- 
thority of the nation’s father, proud of their position and 
presuming upon it, and often weighing heavily upon their 
plebeian countrymen; yet their general independence of 
the Emperor, and sympathy with the nation, are assured 
by the fact that their ranks are recruited directly from the 
mass of the people, and by a process which really brings, 
in the main, the best talent of the country to the manage- 
ment of its affairs. It is well known that for ages past 
the incumbents of office in China have been taken exclu- 
sively from the so-called lettered class; the class of those 
who, having been thoroughly instructed in the various 
branches of Chinese learning, have exhibited, in a strict 
competitive examination, the highest capacity and the 
profoundest acquirements. Access to this examination is 
denied to no one; the career of honors and dignities is 
open to every individual in the empire who has the req- 
uisite talent and industry. In this provision, and in the 
primary municipal institutions already referred to above, 
there is laid a foundation of real democratic equality, 


74 | CHINA AND THE CHINESE. 


and one of no little depth and firmness, for the fabric of 
absolutism to rest upon. And the general result has 
been, that the empire has been governed under a system 
of laws of rare wisdom, equity, and humanity, which 
need not shrink from a comparison with those of the 
most favored epochs of the most enlightened nations in 
the world. When the Chinese have suffered under tyran- 
nical oppression, it has been from the abuse of absolute 
power, exercised arbitrarily and in contravention of law. 
Against this they have reserved to themselves but a sin- 
gle remedy, and that is, the right of open rebellion. 
When matters have been borne with to the utmost, when 
the corruption or imbecility of the reigning dynasty, and 
the impossibility that the nation should be happy under 
its charge, are evident beyond dispute, then it is assumed 
that the commission of heaven has been withdrawn ; pre- 
tenders to the virtually vacant office start up, and he who 
succeeds in crowding himself into the throne, and setting 
successfully in motion the machine of state, is accepted 
anew as the nation’s parent and absolute lord. 

It is not difficult to see the consistency between a polit- 
ical constitution like this, and the form and condition of 
the national religion, as we have described it. ‘The fam- 
ily being the norm of the state, and the parental relation 
being held in the highest respect in the one as in the other, 
it was the more natural and easy to maintain the popu- 
lar worship of the ancestors: this was hardly more than 
a transfer of the filial submission, attention, and rever- 
ence, always paid to the living parents, to their departed 
spirits. In the patriarchal state, again, there is no dis- 
tinct separation of religious from political functions ; both 
belong alike to the head of the family, and to his dele- 
gated representatives. ‘The Chinese, indeed, can hardly 
be said ever to have established a distinction between 
religious, moral, and _ political principles, acts, and duties. 
All were alike incumbent upon the individual, and neces- 


CHINA AND THE CHINESE. 75 


sary to the well-being of society: why should they be 
severed from one another ? 

We cannot forbear calling attention once more to the 
fundamental traits of the Chinese character, as displayed 
in their system of government: the simplicity, the prim- 
itiveness in the common order of historical succession, of 
their form of polity; and, on the other hand, the magnifi- 
cence of the development which it received, as applied 
to regulate the affairs of a vast and cultivated empire, 
instead of the petty concerns of a feeble tribe, or agere- 
gate of tribes, such as those among whom we generally 
find that form prevailing; and the high measure of 
success which attended its workings. It never produced 
a separation of the people into privileged and unpriv- 
ileged classes, with the. discontent and heart-burning, 
the arrogance on one side and abjectness on the other, 
which are wont to result from such a separation. The 
distinction of wealth and poverty, and such others as 
seem to inhere in the very constitution of human society, 
did indeed exist.in China, as elsewhere, and produced 
enough of practical inequality ; but the law did nothing 
to aggravate or perpetuate it. Nor did the system degen- 
erate into one of organized oppression, or of galling in- 
terference with individual rights. Not a little of personal 
freedom was enjoyed under it. The individual was 
left at liberty to go and come, to follow what course of 
life he would; he was protected in the acquisition and 
the enjoyment of wealth. There was wanting only that 
he should be fenced about with those safeguards against 
arbitrary violence on the part of his rulers, without which 
civil liberty, as we understand it, does not exist; but 
this was a want of which he himself, at least, was not 
conscious ; he neither knew nor dreamed of a better sys- 
tem than that under which he lived. 

Such we believe to have been, in their main features, 
the institutions of China at the time of the appearance of 


76 | CHINA AND THE CHINESE. 


Confucius. We have already briefly characterized the 
nature of the work which he undertook with reference 
to them. He came, not to overthrow, but to establish ; 
not to reform, but to restore. He came to rouse the con- 
science of the nation, and to recall it to the fulfillment of 
known duty, and the practice of acknowledged virtue ; to 
rescue the national institutions from the destruction with 
which they were threatened, by self-seeking rapacity on 
the one side and insubordination on the other, and by the 
general corruption of morals and manners. He came to 
give to the national ideas their highest, clearest, and most 
authoritative expression, that the nation might never forget 
or neglect them. He was not a religious teacher, because 
the national spirit, of which he was the reflection, was 
by no means religious. At his time, indeed, even the 
modicum of religious faith which had found its express- 
ion in the ancient religion seems to have nearly died out, 
and the ceremonies both of official and private worship 
to have become the forms which they have since contin- 
ued to be, tenaciously adhered to and faithfully practiced, 
but no longer representing a living belief. Confucius 
accepted these ceremonies, and enjoined their careful 
observance ; but, as it seems, from no higher regard for 
them than as they formed a part of the system under 
which virtue had flourished, and happiness reigned, in 
the ancient times of the empire. He expressly declined 
to meddle with matters lying beyond the present world 
and mortal life, in words identical in spirit with those of 
the famous couplet of Pope. ‘ While I know so little of 
myself, my fellow beings, and the world which I see 
about me,” he says, ‘‘how should I venture to carry my 
inquiries beyond them?” Accordingly, he bases his sys- 
tem upon no alleged revelation of a divine will; he de- 
rives for it no support from the retributions and recom- 
penses of a future state of existence; he reads the will of 
Heaven only in the love of right and justice and virtue 


CHINA AND. THE CHINESE. 77 


inherent in the human mind, and in the dependence upon 
these of the happiness of the individual and the welfare 
of society. These principles he lays down broadly and 
faithfully enough; the simplicity, dignity, and purity of 
his moral teachings are unsurpassed. He makes no pre- 
tention to metaphysical profundity, or to subtlety of casu- 
istical reasoning: the results he arrives at are reached 
directly, by the intuition of an enlightened mind and a 
benevolent heart ; they are stated aphoristically, and the 
sympathy, rather than the intellectual acumen, of the dis- 
ciple, is trusted to for a favorable response. He con- 
tents himself with laying down guiding principles, not 
following out their application into all the details of life 
and action. | 

It would be an ungrateful task to criticise the work of 
Confucius, and dwell with reprobation upon what he did 
not accomplish. In the most important point of all he is 
above the reach of criticism: he did all that was in him 
to do; so far as we are able to judge him; he was as 
sincere, as devoted, as disinterested, as any of those who 
are numbered among the world’s great teachers. His de- 
ficiencies may be summed up in a word: he was Chinese, 
and Chinese only. But it is on that very account that 
his influence over his countrymen has been unbounded. 
That it has been for good, too, and almost only for good, 
does not admit of question. That the Chinese system 
found at that time so noble and unexceptionable an ex- 
pression was a matter of no slight moment to the nation. 
It was a critical period in their history. A philosophy 
specious in appearance, but corrupt at the core, and 
which cunningly adapted itself to the salient features of 
the Chinese character, might then have won currency, to 
promote powerfully the disorganization of society, and to 
‘bring down the permanent ruin of the empire. The in- 
fluence of the Confucian doctrine, on the contrary, has 
‘been in a high degree conservative; it has contributed 


78 | CHINA AND THE CHINESE. 


its full share toward the wonderful longevity of the Chi- 
nese state. The nation, on its part, deserves not a little 
credit for having implicitly accepted, and faithfully ad- 
hered to, a system of teachings of so pure and elevated a 
character. Their adoption of it, as we have already 
seen, was complete. For two thousand years the Confu- 
cian doctrines have been the moral basis of the whole 
fabric of Chinese thought and action. The works which 
contain them have been the invariable text-books, by and 
from which each successive generation has been educated. 
To appreciate the significance of this fact, we need to note 
the special importance of the system of instruction in a 
country where instruction is so general and so highly con- 
sidered, and where eminence in learning is the path to 
honor and authority; where the educated are the only 
aristocracy, and form the class from which are drawn the 
rulers of the nation. And further, we need to note the 
peculiar character of the process of education in China ; 
how that, owing to the great difficulty of the written 
language, more and maturer years are devoted to it than 
with us; how that, by the intense and prolonged toil 
which the student is compelled to devote to his text- 
books, in order to answer the requirements of the system 
of examinations, the native energy of his mind is im- 
paired, and he becomes rather mastered by their contents 
than himself master of them. All the educated intellect 
of China has been thus imbued with Confucianism ; even 
those have been schooled in it who were votaries of other 
religions than that of the state. As the Bible underlies 
all the varying forms of religion of the Christian world, 
so Confucianism has underlain all the phases of Chinese 
doctrine. That it admitted of being overlaid with new 
growth is not its least virtue. It trammeled the progress 
neither of religion nor of science, for it was not based upon 
any system of religious belief, nor identified with any 
scheme of physical or metaphysical philosophy. If the 


CHINA AND THE CHINESE. 79 


Chinese have fallen later into idolatry and superstition, and 
have made little valuable progress in knowledge, it has not 
been owing to the enslavement of the national mind by 
Confucius, but to defects more radical in the national 
character. 

Before going on to present our views of the Chinese 
character, we will briefly sketch the history of the em- 
pire since the epoch of the great philosopher. 

The dynasty under which Confucius lived eked out its 
existence for more than two centuries after his death, or 
until B. Cc. 255, without any marked change in the con- 
ditions of the country. The Confucian school flourished 
in high esteem ; about one hundred years after the death 
of its founder it produced its next most eminent sage, 
Mencius, the record of whose wisdom is included in, and 
closes, the sacred canon. Under the following dynasty, 
however, the Confucian doctrines and their representa- 
tives suffered a severe persecution, which, had their hold 
upon the popular mind been less firm, might have extin- 
guished them forever. About 250 B.c., the princes of 
the kingdom of Tsin, in the northwestern part of the 
empire, rebelled against the imperial authority, extin- 
guished the dynasty of Chau, and seated themselves upon 
the throne. ‘The second emperor of the new dynasty of 
Tsin, Chi-hoang-ti, is one of the most remarkable figures 
presented by Chinese history. A great statesman and 
warrior, he destroyed the independent power of the petty 
sovereigns of provinces, and made the whole empire 
once more submissive to the imperial sceptre; he car- 
ried his arms far to the west, extending the dominion 
of China over nearly all central Asia; he chased the 
Huns across the northern frontier, and, to check their in- 
cursions for the future, he built the Great Wall, which has 
ever since remained one of the wonders of the world. 
But, in spite of his great deeds, his memory is execrated 
by the Chinese. His temper and spirit were thoroughly 
un-Chinese. He abhorred the servitude to usage and 


80 . CHINA AND. THE CHINESE. 


precedent to which even the imperial power had been 
wont to be subjected. He detested the authority of the 
past; he wished to blot out even all memory of it, 
and to begin on white paper a new history of the empire. 
To this end he sought to annihilate the existing liter- 
ature, especially the Confucian, and to destroy its sec- 
taries. The books he burned, all that the strictest req- 
—uisition could bring into his power ; the philosophers he 
buried alive, or sent to work upon the Wall. This state 
of things did not, however, endure long. Hardly was the 
great Emperor dead when his family were hurled from 
the throne; and one of the first acts of the founder of the 
dynasty which succeeded was to make ’a solemn puaratn 
age to the grave of Confucius. 

The dynasty of Han held the great fnlovie of the em- 
pire together for about four hundred years, or during the 
two centuries that preceded, and the two that followed, 
the birth of Christ. Such was the general wisdom of 
their rule, and the happiness of the country under it, that 
the Chinese even yet love to call themselves sons of Han. 
During the first century after Christ, Buddhism was in- 
troduced from India, and made immense progress among 
the people. To this great event in the history of the 
country we can give but a passing mention here ; its 
fuller consideration belongs to another department of 
our subject. As had been the case with its predecessors, 
however, the power and success of the dynasty waned at 
last, and, about 200 A. D., the empire was rent into three 
independent kingdoms, and a new era of intestine war 
and commotion began. Yet even this was not without 
its glories. The period of the San-Kwo, or ‘ Three 
Kingdoms,’ is the heroic age of Chinese history, prolific 
of striking character and startling incident, the source 
whence the novelists-and dramatists of after times have 
drawn their best materials. 

We pass over the five following dynasties, which, to- 
gether, lasted only a little more than three hundred 


CHINA AND THE CHINESE. 81 


years, from 264 to 588 A. D., and which held under their 
dominion only a part, now greater and now less, of the 
empire, noticing only that the invention of printing from 
wooden blocks, as at present practiced by the Chinese, 
was made about the close of this period. 

The dynasty of Sui, which next obtained the control 
of affairs, once more united the dismembered empire, 
but, after only thirty years of power, was forced to yield 
the sceptre to the founder of the great dynasty of Tang. 

Now followed a period of internal order and prosperity, 
of outward power and glory. The limits of the empire 
were again carried to the Caspian.. Lyric poetry was 
revived, and attained its highest perfection. The drama 
arose... The examinations for literary dignity and_ politi- 
cal office were placed upon the footing which they have 
from that time maintained. The Chinese Academy, 
which has since played a conspicuous and important. part 
in both the literary and political history of the country, 
was founded. During the reign of the Tang, China was 
probably the most enlightened and happy country on the 
face of the earth. But this dynasty, too, degenerated, 
and, after a period of weakness and misery, became ex- 
tinct at the beginning of the tenth century. During the 
fifty-three years of civil war which succeeded, five differ- 
ent dynasties arose and fell. At last, in A. D. 960, the 
house of Sung seized the reins of authority, and reés- 
tablished peace and order throughout the empire. 

A new enemy, however, had appeared, to vex the Chi- 
nese state. The Tartar.and Mongol tribes of the great 
plateau of Central Asia were beginning those restless 
heavings which not long after poured them, like a deluge 
of destruction, over all the countries of the east, the 
south, and the west. By the year 1127, they had 
wrested from the empire the territory north of the 
Hoang-ho, and were pressing on to the conquest of the 
rest. In this time of internal and external misery and 

6 


82, CHINA AND THE CHINESE. 


danger, appeared the last great representative of Chinese 
philosophy, the sage Chu-hi. In wisdom and virtue he is 
accounted almost another Confucius; he is universally 
regarded as the man who has best comprehended, and 
most truly reproduced, the spirit of the Confucian doc- 
trines ; his interpretation and explication of the canoni- 
cal and classical books has had, for all after time, an 
authority only inferior to that of those books themselves. 
Like his master and exemplar, he devoted himself, as 
statesman and as teacher, to the restoration of virtue and 
the salvation of the state. But the march of events was 
not to be arrested ; China was doomed to pass, for the 
first time in her: history, under a foreign yoke. ‘he 
Mongols, under Genghis Khan, invited in at first as aux- 
iliaries against the Tartars, seized upon the empire for 
themselves ; and in 1279, Kublai Khan, the grandson of 
Genghis, became the first emperor of a new Mongol dy- 
nasty, to which he gave the name of Yuen. 

That was a splendid vassalage in which the Chinese 
empire was now held. From his throne at Pekin, Ku- 
blai swayed the affairs of all the countries from the 
eastern seas to the very borders of Germany. ‘The 
Emperor of China was sovereign of the most enormous 
empire which the world has ever seen. Kublai was a 
great ruler, too, and he had especially at heart the wel- 
fare of China, the richest and most populous part of his 
dominions, and his residence. He reformed the abuses 
which under the Sung had crept into every department 
of the administration. He executed great and beneficial 
public works: the Grand Canal is a monument of his 
wise policy. Literature flourished under him: the period 
of the Yuen is that of the highest perfection of the 
drama. Altogether, the country enjoyed greater pros- — 
perity under his government than for centuries before. 
Yet was the nation impatient of foreign rule, and when, 
under the successors of Kublai, weakness and tyranny 


CHINA AND THE CHINESE. ' 83 


began to usurp the place of vigor and justice at the capi- 
tal, a general insurrection took place, which expelled the 
intrusive dynasty before it had completed its first century 
of dominion. 

With the dynasty of Ming, which mounted the throne 
in 1368, begins the modern epoch of Chinese history. 
Founded by a man of various and remarkable genius, 
who was the son of a common laborer, and had been a 
Buddhist priest before he became a soldier of fortune, it 
upheld for a time the glory and prosperity of the empire, 
but later, lapsing into imbecility, met with the fate of 
the Sung. Early in the sixteenth century, the Manchus, 
another branch of the same family with the Tartars and 
Mongols, began to harass the northern frontier, and, be- 
tween foreign invasion and internal oppression and rebel- 
lion, the country was reduced to a state of extreme mis- 
ery. Though the Manchus doubtless aimed at making 
the whole empire their own, it was not as conquerors that 
they actually possessed themselves of the throne. They 
were called in by a faithful servant of the Ming, to save 
the dynasty from destruction by successful rebellion: but 
they reached Pekin too late ; the last Ming emperor had 
slain his family and hung himself, to avoid falling into 
the hands of the rebel leader. Advantage was at once 
taken of so favorable a conjuncture ; the Manchu chief 
seated himself upon the vacant throne, and China once 
more saw a dynasty of foreign birth. This was in 1644. 
The new dynasty gave itself the name of Ta-Tsing, or 
‘“‘ Great-Pure.” It was not firmly and peaceably estab- 
lished upon the throne until after fifty years of struggle ; 
then, the last grand rebellion was repressed by the wis- 
dom and valor of the illustrious Kang-hi, the greatest of 
the Manchu line of monarchs, and his descendant is still 
Emperor of China. 

The Manchu conquest is to be looked upon rather as a 
blessing than as a misfortune to the country. China had 


84 | CHINA AND THE CHINESE. 


never been in such a condition of anarchy and distress as. 
during the last years of the Ming. Civil war and op- 
pression ran riot in the land. It almost makes one’s 
blood run cold to read of horrible massacres and devasta- 
tions, by which whole provinces were turned into deserts. 
The Manchus were a hardy race of northern warriors, 
greatly superior to the Chinese in warlike prowess, and 
they soon established comparative order throughout the 
empire. Like the Mongols, they attempted no revolu- 
tion, no great and sweeping change even, in the order of — 
the state. The submission of these wild tribes to the 
superior enlightenment of the people whom they had 
brought under their sway is remarkable. It would have 
been, indeed, no light undertaking for a horde of warlike 
barbarians to force into new ways the teeming millions of 
the Chinese. population, more inflexibly attached than 
any other race on earth to. their own institutions, of im- 
memorial antiquity ; but we should hardly have expected 
them so fully to realize this truth, and so wisely to goy- 
ern themselves by it. Aided by the all-controlling cen- 
tralism of the Chinese system, they have simply infused 
an element of their own nationality through all the de- 
partments and grades of office, and allowed the great 
machine to work on as before, only with another engi- 
neer. Perhaps— we would not venture to affirm or deny 
it with confidence — perhaps. the vital force of the Chi- 
nese race, after an existence so immensely prolonged, was 
becoming exhausted, and an infusion of new and vigor- 
ous blood was needed, in order to the further continuance 
of healthy life. However that may be, the best period 
of the Manchu domination, including the reigns of the 
great. Kang-hi and his grandson Kien-lung, each of them 
of sixty years’ length —the former reigned from. 1662 
to 1723, the latter from 1736 to 1796 —has been not 
less distinguished by power and consideration abroad, by 
tranquillity, prosperity, and contentment at home, by the 


CHINA AND THE CHINESE. oy REST 


faithful administration of just laws, by the success of in- 
dustry, by the increase of population, by the activity of 
literary production, than the best which the Chinese an- 
nals can boast. Since the beginning of this century, the 
vigor and purity of the administration have greatly fallen 
off ; discontent has arisen, to which additional violence 
has been given by the antagonism of the two national- 
ities, and many of the signs have appeared which in 
China are wont to indicate the downfall of an old dynasty, 
and the accession to power of a new one, with the inter- 
vention of a longer or shorter period of confusion and 
anarchy. | 

As to what the result is to be, we will not at present 
trust ourselves to offer an opinion, or even a conjecture. 
Two questions, of the most important bearing upon the 
future of the empire, demand first to be settled. Has 
the national character indeed so fatally degenerated that 
the country is no longer capable of rising by its own in- 
ternal forces, as of old, from depression and misery ? 
And again, what will be the effect upon the nation of the 
intrusion of foreign ideas, foreign arms, and foreign 
poisons? Both these questions are not a little difficult 
of solution. As to the first, the testimony of those who 
speak from personal observation is often very conflicting, 
~ even as regards the character of the Chinese of the present 
day, and generally very unreliable, as regards the com- 
parison of the present with the past. Assignable reasons 
for this are not wanting. Many have judged the whole 
nation from a brief knowledge of the inhabitants of the 
sea-board cities, unquestionably the lowest class of the 
whole population, representing the native character as 
most altered for the worse by foreign trade and piracy. 
Those who know the Chinese most thoroughly, by con- 
tinued, wide-extended, and familiar intercourse, are gen- 
erally those whose opinion of them is most favorable. 
But the Chinese nature must not be too exclusively 


86 | CHINA AND THE CHINESE. 


judged by the impression it makes upon those who at 
the present day are brought in contact with it. Its de- 
ficiencies have always been of such a character as most to 
offend our tastes, and through them to affect our judg- 
ments. ‘There has been in it a dryness, a lack of ideality, 
of affection, of enthusiasm, which strikes us more strongly 
and unfavorably than the want in others of many a real 
sterling quality which the Chinese have possessed. In 
almost all that they are and do, there is something which 
spoils its savor for us. ‘Their faces and forms are ugly in 
our eyes ; their elaborate and exaggerated manners, reg- 
ulated by rules older than all the Occidental literature, 
seem to us almost a mockery. Their capacities are lim- 
ited by bounds of which we are so impatient, that we fail 
to appreciate how admirably they work within those 
limits. ‘They exhibit in everything a childishness which 
sits most ungracefully upon their antiquated stiffness. 
In short, they seem a-miraculously preserved relic of 
antediluvianism, most unlike us, and hardest for us to 
understand, or feel sympathy with. Their music illus- 
trates the difference in our make and theirs. What to 
them is delightful harmony, to us is ear-splitting and 
soul-harrowing discord: we could tolerate it as the ac- 
companiment of a war-dance of savages, but we cannot 
bear it from a people pretending to culture. Their draw- 
ing and painting, too, though showing close and shrewd 
observation, great faculty of imitation, skill in the use of 
colors, and a power of expression and. artistic freedom of 
handling which Egyptian art does not. even approach, not 
only is ignorant of- perspective, but wants the very vivi- 
fying spirit of beauty which should elevate it from a mere 
talent to the dignity of an art. All this we should find 
much more tolerable if the Chinese mind were more open 
to instruction, could be convinced of its deficiencies, and 
brought to acknowledge the superiority of another culture. 
And thus it might be, were it only half-grown and still 


CHINA AND THE CHINESE. 87 


developing. But it has been for these thousands of years 
fully grown and completely developed ; it has virtually 
worked out whatever of capacity there was in it. Dur- 
ing all that time, China has been immensely superior to 
all the neighboring nations. It has been the source 
whence these have drawn art, science, and letters. It 
has brought barbarous hordes under the sway of its reg- 
ulated polity. Repeatedly overrun and conquered, it has, 
like Greece, vanquished its victors; and even more truly 
than Greece, for it has never been ruled under any other 
than its own institutions. What wonder, then, if it is 
unable and unwilling truly to appreciate, and ingenuously 
to accept, what is now offered it from without? Is it not 
the very essence of the Chinese nature to be fixed and 
immovable ? 

The brief historical sketch which we have given will 
serve to show, we think, that the theory of Chinese qui- 
etism and immobility must be held under some restric- 
tions. The outward condition, at least, of the empire, 
has not been one of tranquil and unbroken uniformity. 
-It has passed through much the same series of convulsions 
and revolutions, though on a far grander scale of num- 
bers and of years, which has also vexed the petty empires 
of the West. The grand and striking difference between 
the two cases is this: in China, the equilibrium has never 
been quite lost; mighty as the elements of disorder and 
destruction have been, those of order and conservatism 
have shown themselves yet more powerful. For this it 
is impossible to account by any assignment of secondary 
causes. The reason lies deep in the foundations of the 
national character itself, in the truly conservative. bent of 
the Chinese mind, which has given to all its productions 
a form calculated for endurance, and has steadfastly ad- 
hered to them, and persistently maintained them upright. 
The same conservatism is exhibited by the intellectual 
life of China. There has been vast and unceasing activ- 


88 | CHINA AND THE CHINESE. 


ity, wonderful industry and productiveness, but next to no 
real advance. But we must never forget, in judging 
China, that, according to the ordinary march of events in 
human history, the Chinese empire should have perished 
from decay, and its culture either have become extinct or 
passed into the keeping of another race, more than two 
thousand years ago. It had already reached the limit to 
its capacity of development. Had it been then swept 
from existence, it would have left behind, for the unmixed 
admiration of all after generations, the memory of a na- 
tion wise, powerful, and cultivated, beyond almost any 
other of the olden time. Consider how many nations. 
have died in giving birth to the modern Christian civiliza- 
tion, of the possession of which we are so proud. Where: 
is Egypt now, that most ancient home of so many of the 
germs.of our culture? Where are the two Semitic races, 
the Phenician and the Hebrew, whose influence on com- 
merce, literature, religion, has been of such exceeding 
importance? Persia, too, has borne her part, if only 
subordinately, in the search after light and the struggle 
for empire: but how short-lived was her glory! And of 
our own chosen European races, the heirs of all the best 
wisdom of the past, the depositories of all the best hopes 
of. the future, how has one fallen and another risen! 
How soon waned the transcendent genius of the Greek! 
How did the Roman empire become the prey of the bar- 
barian, when over all Europe settled down the gloom of 
the Dark Ages! How is Spain degraded from the fore- 
most rank she onee held! And who shall tell what the 
future may have in store for those who are now the rep- 
resentatives of the world’s best thought and action ? 

Such considerations as these should make us modest 
and merciful in passing judgment upon China. If the 
present is ours, the past is hers. Were ‘it possible to 
multiply the amount of enlightenment which she has en- 
joyed by the years of its duration, and’ the number of 


CHINA AND THE CHINESE. 89 


human beings who have profited by it, we have little 
doubt that there would be found to have shone in China, 
in the aggregate, not much less light than in all the rest 
of the earth taken together. It is our duty, too, in form- 
ing our estimate of the value of a system, to take fully 
into account its adaptedness to the people who have lived 
under it, as indicated by its successful working. And we - 
must perforce acknowledge that the Chinese have shown 
on the grandest scale that practical capacity which they 
evince in the petty concerns of ordinary life, by giving 
origin to a system of morality and polity which, however 
imperfect we may deem it in many respects to be, has 
proved itself so precisely suited to them. So long a life 
necessarily implies the presence of sound and healthful 
qualities. The history of the Chinese proves them to 
have been distinguished, as a nation, by many saving vir- 
tues: by orderliness, by submissiveness, by contentment 
of spirit, by frugality, by industry, by temperance, by 
general morality. 

We have felt that these aspects of Chinese character, 
that this method of viewing it as exhibited in the whole 
history of the country and its institutions, had been too 
much neglected; that the general opinion did not do 
justice to its many great and admirable qualities. Hence 
we have been the more solicitous to set them forth prom- 
inently, and in as favorable a light as historic verity 
would allow. If we shall seem to any to have done them 
more than justice, we may plead that there are enough 
to judge harshly the unfortunate Chinese, and to heap con- 
tumely upon them, and that they deserve to find also a 
friendly advocacy. That they have fallen from the normal 
standard of their national character, we do indeed fully 
believe: their religious condition is sufficient proof of it : 
they have passed from that negative state in which we 
have depicted them, and in which history shows that no 
~ nation can long abide, into positive idolatry and supersti- 


D0 eee CHINA AND THE CHINESE. 


tion. No satisfactory discussion of this point and of its 
bearings is possible, however, without a much fuller con- 
sideration of the intercourse of China with the rest of 
the world, and its effects upon her, than we have left 
ourselves room for. We shall return to the subject ina 
future article. 


1a 
CHINA AND THE WEST. 


—_~—- 


In a former article we presented a sketch of the history 
of China, and a brief and comprehensive view of Chinese 
imstitutions. Our design was, by thus exhibiting the 
character and culture of the Chinese nation in their 
whole historical development, to lead to more intelligent 
and juster views of their value, and so to help in solving 
one of the great questions which must suggest itself to 
every one who takes even an ordinary interest in the his- 
torical events of the day — namely, what is to become of 
China now, when she is no longer left to work out her 
own destiny undisturbed, but is forced to feel the potent 
influence of Western ideas, commercial, social, and relig- 
ious, backed by Western arms and diplomacy? Revert- 
ing at present to the general subject, we take up a portion 
of the evidence affecting it which was then left untouched 
—the history of the intercourse hitherto carried on be- 
tween China and the West, and the influence already ex- 
erted by the latter upon the former. 

It is only with the nations of the West that we have 
now to do. ‘Toward the North, the East, and the South, 
China has always maintained the position of an acknowl- 
edged superior, in arms, in culture, or in both. We have 
seen, while reviewing the annals of Chinese history, that 
the irruptions of the northern and northwestern barba- 
rians into the Great Central Flowery Kingdom have in- 
deed repeatedly led to their political supremacy, but have 


92 CHINA AND THE WEST. 


also always ended in their intellectual and social subjec- 
tion. As for Japan and Farther India, they have bor- 
rowed from their powerful and enlightened neighbor 
letters and arts, and have given little or nothing in re- 
turn. None of these nations stands now in any such rela- 
tion to China as should lend importance to the history of 
their former dealings with her. With the remoter West, 
the case is far otherwise ; it has become a matter of no 
small moment to trace downward, through more than 
twenty centuries, the successive steps of that intercourse 
by which the races of our own Indo-European stock — 
beginning with its most eastern representative, the Indian, 
and ending with its most western, the English —have 
affected, and are threatening yet more powerfully to 
affect, the fates of the great Oriental empire. 

The determining motives of intercourse between the 
West and the extreme East have been from the earliest 
times, as they are even now, of two kinds, commercial 
and religious. ‘There was the exhaustless wealth of the 
empire to be shared in by the rest of the race; there 
were the teeming millions of its population to be con- 
verted to a new faith and a better life. ‘The two motives 
have operated, sometimes together, more often independ- 
ently of each other ; we shall, in treating of them, follow 
simply the order of time, tracing their joint and separate 
workings from the beginning down to the present age. 

As commerce has ever been wont to serve as the pio- 
neer of missionary effort, so was it with respect to China 
also. The attractions of the empire for the trader and 
merchant have ever been of the most commanding char- . 
acter. The great variety and richness of its natural pro- 
ductions, together with the inventive ingenuity, the me- 
chanical skill, and the unwearying industry of its people, 
have made it, since the first dawn of history, one of the 
oreat bazars of the world’s trade. Such a career of in- 
dustrial preéminence no other nation or country has seen. 


CHINA AND THE WEST. 93 


How few years have elapsed since the highest ambition 
of the skilled workmen of Europe was to imitate with 
success the Chinese porcelain! And hardly does the 
memory or the tradition of the West reach back to a 
time when the silk stuffs of China were not the richest 
articles of apparel and ornament which the earth could 
afford to the wealthy and luxurious. At precisely what 
period the products of the Chinese looms and workshops 
first found their way into western Asia, it is not now 
possible to say. Vessels of Chinese manufacture are as- 
serted to have been found in Egyptian tombs of not less 
than fourteen centuries before Christ, but the authentic- 
ity of the claim is at least very questionable. The first 
distinct mention of the country in western literature now 
extant is supposed to be the well known passage in 
Isaiah (xlix. 12), ‘‘and these from the land of Sinim.” 
At the time of the Jewish prophet, then, at least five 
hundred years before our era, some dim knowledge of 
China had reached Palestine — doubtless from Babylon, 
and as the result of that overland trade to Persia and 
Assyria which we certainly know to have been actively 
carried on at a period not much later. The natural po- 
sition of the empire determined the routes of its early 
commerce. ‘The ocean was long a barrier, and not a 
highway, upon its eastern and southern border. There 
is no evidence that even the adventurous fleets of Pheni- 
cia ever reached those shores. The mountains which 
shut it in upon the west left but a single practicable pas- 
sage into the interior of Asia, and that was at the north- 
western corner of the empire, the entrance way, perhaps, 
of the Chinese race itself, and near to its earliest histor- 
ical seats. Through that gate more than one route led 
across the deserts, amid the wild tribes that infested 
them, and over lofty chains of mountains, to the valleys 
of the Oxus and Jaxartes in northeastern Iran, whence 
the way lay open to Mesopotamia, Syria, and the Mediter- 


94 CHINA AND THE WEST. 


ranean. A long and perilous route, truly; and if the 
prize had been less tempting, even the daring traders of 
those times would not have cared to risk its dangers. 
We have authentic information from the Chinese annals, 
that, in the times of the Han dynasty, a century and 
more before Christ, the resources of the empire were 
tasked to quell the insolence of the northern nomads, and 
give freedom and safety to the westward journeys of the 
caravans. The vigorous and growing China of those 
heroic times thus took an active part in the commerce 
which bore its productions to the West. A» couple of 
centuries later, the borders of the empire were also ap- 
proached upon the other side, by sea; China was drawn 
into the net of that world-commerce which brought to 
Rome and her dependencies, through the Red Sea, and 
by the mart of Alexandria, the wealth and luxury of 
India and the farthest East. If the current identifica- 
tion of Ptolemy’s Kattigara with the modern Canton be 
well founded, that port began soon after the commence- 
ment of our era to play the prominent part in commercial 
history which has ever since belonged to it. 

An indirect consequence, probably, of the trade be- 
tween China and Bokhara, and one of far greater impor- 
tance in the ancient history of the empire than any com- 
merce, was the introduction into it of Buddhism. This 
Hindu religion— of which the author is supposed to 
have lived in the sixth century before Christ, and so to 
have been very nearly a contemporary of Confucius — 
began, three or four hundred years after its origin, to be 
carried in every direction beyond the borders of India, 
by the earliest religious missionaries whom the world 
has ever seen. The countries on the northwest of India 
soon became, as they long continued to be, a chief seat 
of the doctrine of Buddha. There the. Chinese first 
made acquaintance with it, and thence, during the first 
century of our era, it made its way into China itself, 


CHINA AND THE WEST. 95 


The Chinese have a story of their own respecting the 
manner in which it was introduced. About A. p. 66, 
say they, the Han emperor, Ming-ti, had his attention 
strongly directed by a dream to an expression in one of 
the works of Confucius, to the effect that ‘they of the 
West have a sage.”” This western sage he determined to 
discover, and accordingly sent out in search of him an 
embassy, which, in due time, returned with Buddhist 
teachers and books from India. We seem to see in this 
not very probable story an attempt to attribute the intro- 
duction of the strange doctrine to imperial agency, and, 
more remotely, to the influence of the great Chinese 
teacher himself; thus, on the one hand, giving the for- 
eign religion a more legitimate status within the limits of 
the empire, and, on the other, relieving the dynasty and 
the literary class of the imputation of having had it 
brought in upon them without their consent and _partici- 
pation. But, however it may have come in, it took firm 
root among the Chinese people, and spread rapidly over 
the empire ; and even now, in the classification of the re- 
ligions of the globe, the four hundred millions of Chinese 
are wont to be set down as votaries of Buddha. 

It is not difficult to see why Buddhism should have 
made extensive conquests among the tribes of central 
Asia. It came to them as one of the matured fruits of 
a culture vastly superior to their own. It brought with 
it knowledge, arts, and letters. Its doctrines were in most 
respects full of attraction. Its morality was all gentle- 
ness and purity. It breathed a spirit of toleration, com- 
passion, love, to all living creatures. It was instinct 
with the sentiment of the universal brotherhood of man, 
a sentiment then unknown elsewhere in the world. Its 
motto was peace on earth, good-will to men. Its philoso- 
phy was indeed atheistic, and its acknowledged and covy- 
eted chief good annihilation. Yet these features of its 
doctrine, little calculated to recommend it to the accept- 


96 | CHINA AND THE WEST. 


ance of wild and simple-minded races, were at a very 
early period greatly modified and concealed, and in its 
popular aspect hardly appeared at all. Its want of a 
pantheon and a mythology was supplied by the elevation 
of its own author into an object of worship, and by the 
creation of a host of kindred deities about him ; its chill- 
ing end was hidden by the interminable series of renewed 
existences, of heavens and hells, interposed between this 
life and it, or was altogether explained away. No won- 
der, then, that it spread and flourished among the uncul- 
tivated people of Asia. No wonder that it acted upon 
them as a softening and civilizing influence, and that its 
results were, upon the whole, eminently happy. 

In China the case was far otherwise. China had a 
civilization and a literature, arts and sciences, of its own, 
not less developed and worthy of admiration, in their 
different and peculiar types, than those of India. It had 
a code of morality as correct and exalted, if less mild and 
winning, than that which Buddha promulgated. In these 
respects it had nothing to gain from foreign teachers. 
And the antithesis of the Chinese and Hindu characters 
has always been such that it would seem impossible that 
any product of the one should be heartily accepted by 
the other. ‘The Chinese are distinguished by hard com- 
mon sense, by worldliness, thrift, industry, domesticity : 
the Hindu is imaginative and metaphysical beyond all 
due measure, careless of the actual and the present, liy- 
ing in and for the future. Not only was the philosophy 
of Buddhism thoroughly penetrated with the negativeness, 
the quiescence, the subjectivity of India ; its external in- 
stitutions were in many points repugnant to the princi- 
ples of Chinese social polity. The assemblage of its 
special votaries, male and female, in great cloisters, 
shocked Chinese ideas of propriety ; its priests, those who 
had risen highest in its faith and practice, and had a pe- 
culiar title to the rewards it promised, were professed cel- 


CHINA AND THE WEST. 97 


ibates and beggars, two characters alike hateful to the or- 
thodox followers of Confucius. How is it, then, that Bud- 
dhism made conquest of China also, as well as of all the 
countries to the west of it? 

We confess that we see no way of answering this ques- 
tion satisfactorily, if the religious condition of the empire 
at the time be not fully taken into consideration. The 
Chinese people was, so to speak, without any religion. 
We have shown in the preceding article how scanty was 
the content, how meagre the forms, of the ancient Chi- 
nese faith; how the whole business of keeping up its 
ceremonies, saving only the offerings to the dead, had 
fallen into the hands of the state, and become a matter 
of official duty only ; how Confucius had known no re- 
ligion and taught none. But it would require a dryness 
of spirit beyond the measure even of Chinese aridity, a 
philosophic enlightenment and freedom from superstitious 
tendencies far greater than China could boast, to main- 
tain a whole nation permanently in this negative condi- 
tion. It must have a positive and tangible creed and 
worship. Buddhism, then, as we conceive, was not ill 
calculated to supply the want. Where such a want was 
felt, its many claims to admiration and acceptance would 
be fully appreciated, and its repulsive features overlooked. 
It was far from exciting enmity and opposition by setting 
itself up in hostility to the native religion. Everywhere 
and always tolerant in its character beyond any other re- 
ligion — the only one, perhaps, which never set on foot a 
religious persecution — it fully admitted and encouraged 
the ceremonial observances of the state officials, and the 
ancestral rites of the common people. It was not above 
adapting itself to the popular mind, and even making it- 
self the minister of the popular superstition. It came in 
thus, as it were, and quietly occupied an almost forsaken 
territory, neither expelling nor disturbing the few origi- 


nal possessors still left there. 
7 


98 | CHINA AND THE WEST. 


Our view of the causes of the success with which the 
efforts of the Buddhist missionaries in China were at- 
tended is supported by the after history of the religion, 
and by the effects which it produced, and which were 
produced upon it, in its joint workings with the native 
institutions. It suffered far more change than it wrought. 
Greatly altered and corrupted, hollowed out from within 
and overlaid with strange matter from without, as Bud- 
- dhism has been everywhere in Asia, in China it soonest 
and most completely lost its original character and legiti- 
mate influence. Not that there were not fora long time 
among its numerous followers those who were zealous for 
the purity of the faith. Time and again, through a succes- 
sion of centuries, enthusiastic and devoted Chinese monks 
visited India, bringing back from thence fresh supplies of 
sound doctrine, and great stores of the Buddhistic legend- 
ary and controversial literature — the dreariest literature, 
perhaps, that was ever painfully scored down, and pa- 
tiently studied, and religiously preserved— which then 
found Chinese translators and imitators, till the empire 
was even fuller of Buddhist books than of those of native 
origin. We still have records of the travels and observa- 
tions of several of those ancient pilgrims, and they tes- 
tify not only to the religious zeal of their authors, but to 
the transforming influence which, in some respects at 
least, and not for the better, Buddhism could exert upon 
the Chinese mind. While, in the absence of a native 
Hindu chronology and history, they are valuable contri- 
butions to our knowledge of India— as eyen bare lists of 
names, of undoubted authenticity and assignable date, 
would be — they are yet as barren of aught that could in- 
terest any but a zealous Buddhist as it was possible to 
make them. One cannot help sorely regretting that the 
travelers had not been genuine Chinese, curious, clear- 
headed, matter-of-fact followers of Confucius, with eyes 
for something besides temples and topes and foot-prints of 


CHINA AND THE WEST. 99 


Buddha, with ears open to something other than legends 
and lying wonders, with interest in something more hu- 
man than the controversies of the schools of Buddhistic 
theology; what priceless information might they not 
then have handed down to us respecting medieval India! 
But when we look for distinct effects of Buddhism upon the 
general national character, we find next to nothing. Con- 
fucianism has maintained since, as before, its mastery over 
the mind of the nation, its first place in the respect and 
affection of the most enlightened class, and the religious 
rites it sanctioned are practiced as faithfully to-day as 
two thousand years ago. Buddhist sentiments of human 
brotherhood have not softened the contempt and dislike 
with which the son of Han regards the “foreign red- 
haired devils.” Buddhist respect for life, in all its man- 
ifestations, has not stopped the slaughter of Chinese 
swine, fowls, and fish. Buddhism has not redeemed the 
religious indifferentism of the Chinese, nor taught them 
to care less for this life and more for another, nor pro- 
vided new and efficient encouragements to virtue or re- 
straints upon vice. While it has thus been no elevating 
and ennobling element in the intellectual and moral de- 
velopment of the Chinese people, it cannot be relieved 
of a heavy responsibility in connection with their relig- 
ious degradation. It has not only opposed no barrier to 
superstition, it has even adopted and encouraged it, and 
furnished it a channel in which to run its course ; and it 
has occupied the ground, to the exclusion of better influ- 
ences, which might otherwise have had more efficiency. 
To follow in detail the external history of Buddhism 
in China is not our intention. At times it has enjoyed 
the smiles of imperial favor; at times it has been severely 
persecuted, for the discordance of its institutions with the 
constitution of the state, and its encouragement of idle- 
ness and idolatry ; yet persecution came too late, and was 
too fitfully resorted to, to interfere seriously with its pros- 


100 | CHINA AND THE WEST. 


perity. It has always been frowned upon and discour- 
aged by the wiser and worthier classes, and occupies at 
present a low and mean position in presence of the pub- 
lic opinion of the empire. China is, indeed, so far as 
this Buddhistic, that it is full of Buddhist monasteries 
and temples, and that few of all its inhabitants would 
hesitate to have recourse to Buddhist ceremonies, or to 
the services of Buddhist priests, in mere superstition, for 
help out of trouble, or for the attaimment of some coy- 
eted good; but in like manner all are Confucians, all are 
sectaries of Tao. There is no Buddhist church or body 
of believers, properly speaking, but only a prelacy and 
priesthood, ignorant and despised, though tolerated and 
supported. 

No small share of the interest which attaches to the 
history of Buddhism arises from its relation to the his- 
tory of Christianity in China. In studying the latter, 
the light cast upon it by the former may not be neg- 
lected. The character and the causes of the lasting suc- 
cess which has attended the proselyting labors of the — 
Indian missionaries must be duly appreciated, if we would 
rightly understand the failure of the repeated and perse- 
vering efforts made for the establishment of Christianity 
within the limits of the empire. 

Leaving out of account, as nothing better than a pious 
fable, the pretended apostolic labors of St. Thomas in 
China, we recognize in the Nestorians the missionaries 
who first carried the Bible and Christianity into: the re- 
motest Hast. This sect, pronounced heretical, and cut off 
from the communion of the western Catholic church, for 
denying that Mary was the mother of God as well as the 
mother of Jesus, and of which the scanty remnants are 
now themselves the objects of Christian missionary labor 
— this sect was, for many centuries, the chief represent- 
ative and the active propagator of Christianity over all 
the vast continent of Asia. Its missionaries, following at 


CHINA AND THE WEST. 101 


a distance of five or six centuries upon the track of the 
apostles of Buddhism, preached the Christian faith in 
almost every country of central and eastern Asia, with 
equal zeal and success; and it might, had the soil been 
as receptive and as fertile as that on which fell the seeds 
of Roman doctrine, have gathered in a harvest not less 
rich and lasting than was reaped at the same period in 
Europe. ‘The decay of the Nestorian church in numbers, 
in power, in energy, in intelligence, has been accompanied 
by the loss of its records, and almost even of its tradi- 
tions; and a few scanty notices, gleaned here and there 
from eastern and western literature, are nearly all the in- 
formation we possess respecting the labors of its mission- 
_aries and their results. When they entered China is not 
certainly known ; it was probably as early as the begin- 
ning of the sixth century. The two monks who in the 
middle of that century brought the eggs of the silk-worm 
to Constantinople are supposed to have been Nestorians. 
Happily there has been preserved to our own days one 
ancient document for the history of the Nestorian mis- 
sions in China. We refer to the famous monument of 
Si-ngan-fu, of which the authenticity, long disputed, may 
now be regarded as fully vindicated. It is an immense 
marble slab, about ten feet by six, having its surface coy- 
ered with a long inscription in Chinese, to which are 
appended a few lines of ancient Syriac. It contains a 
summary statement and eulogy of the doctrines of the 
Illustrious Religion, as the Nestorian faith was denomi- 
nated, a grateful commemoration of the favors shown it 
by the emperors of the great Tang dynasty, and a general . 
account of the success which had attended its propagation 
in the empire. It was prepared and set up A. D. 781, 
during the reign of the Tang, and its record goes no 
farther back than to the accession of that dynasty to the 
throne, or to A. D. 635, when the arrival of a certain 
Alopun from Syria, and the encouragement extended to 


102 | CHINA AND THE WEST. 


him, seem to have made an era in the history of the mis- 
sion. ‘The erectors of the monument claim that the vota- 
ries of their doctrine were numerous throughout the em- 
‘pire, and that their churches were to be found in every 
city ; and there is no reason to question the justice of 
these claims ; they are fully supported by all the scat- 
tered evidences which we are able to derive from other 
_ sources of a later date. At the epoch of the Tang, 
haughty and ignorant exclusiveness had not come to be a 
fundamental characteristic of Chinese policy; the empire 
was hardly less open to foreigners than the freest states 
of modern Europe, and its sailors and merchants bore an 
active part in a widely extended foreign commerce. We 
have in our hands the relations of one or two Arab tray- 
elers of the ninth century, which show us that for hun- 
dreds of years the intercourse between Chinese ports and 
the marts of India and the Persian Gulf had been lively 
and constant. Chinese vessels, far exceeding in size those 
of the western countries, came to the mouth of the 
Euphrates for the exchange of valuable commodities. 
Arabs, Persians, and Jews, as well as Christians, were to 
be found in great numbers in Chinese cities. According 
to the Chinese annals, the Arabs and Persians were nu- 
merous enough in Canton in A. D. 758 to take advantage 
of the breaking out of a tumult to burn and plunder the 
city. Arab tourists penetrated to the capital, and had 
audiences of the emperor ; and the accounts they give us 
of his familiarity with the geography and politics of the 
West, and of his freedom from prejudice and national 
vanity, are almost marvelous. Khan-fu, a port better sit- 
uated than any which has for centuries past been acces- 
sible to European commerce, was then the chief resort of 
the foreigners. ‘The Mohammedans settled there were 
judged by one of their own number, appointed by imperial 
authority to the office. An attractive picture is drawn by 
our Arab authorities of the then condition of the empire, 


CHINA AND THE WEST. 103 


of its populousness, its wealth, its fertility, its beauty, of 
the fineness of its silks and its transparent porcelain, of 
the justice and equity of its government, and of the uni- 
versal education of its people—every one learning to 
read and write, and the poor receiving instruction at the 
public expense. ‘The picture is not too highly colored ; 
we have said before that the enlightenment and prosper- 
ity of the Chinese empire at this period were not excelled 
anywhere upon earth. ‘Toward the end of the ninth cen- 
tury, however, a terrible change came over the scene. 
The ruling dynasty went down, amid tumult, devastation, 
and massacre. In 877, Khan-fu was besieged and taken 
by a ferocious rebel chief, and one hundred and twenty 
thousand Mussulmans, Christians, Jews, and Parsis, are 
said to have been slaughtered among its inhabitants ; we 
may hope that at least the number is greatly exaggerated. 
This disaster gave a shock to foreign commerce from 
which it was slow to recover; for a long time regular in- 
tercourse by sea with the West was suspended. The 
Nestorian missions bore their share in the general suffer- 
ing of the country ; a reinforcement sent out by water in 
the course of the next century returned, somewhat has- 
tily and faint-heartedly, perhaps, professing to have found 
no trace of its co-religionists, and announcing that the 
Christian religion was extinct in China. For a long 
time the empire was lost sight of and forgotten, as it 
were, in Europe and the western coasts of Asia; no fur- 
ther mention of it is to be met with in occidental litera- 
ture until the thirteenth century. 

That the proselyting efforts of the Nestorians in High 
Asia were not in the mean time intermitted, was attested 
to the West by dim rumors of a mighty potentate in the 
distant East, who was both a Christian and a priest — 
rumors which made their way to Europe in the eleventh 
and twelfth centuries. Our English version of the name 
by which he was known is Prester John. This was, in 


104 | CHINA AND THE WEST. 


fact, an actual personage, the powerful Khan of the 
Kerait Tartars, converted to Nestorian Christianity early 
in the eleventh century. The tribe was conquered later 
by Genghis-Khan, and incorporated into the Mongol em- 
pire, but its sovereign was still a Christian when Marco 
Polo passed through his country on the way to China. 
The noted traveler whose name we have just men- 
tioned may almost be said to have discovered to Chris- 
tian Europe the countries of Central and Eastern Asia. 
His father and uncle, noble merchants of Venice, had 
found their way to Peking, the capital of the Mongol 
emperor Kublai, in 1260; after a brief stay in the coun- 
try, they were dispatched by Kublai himself upon an em- 
bassy to the Pope, and upon their return, in 1276, they 
took the young Marco with them. Their journeys to and 
fro were made by the tedious and painful inland route. 
They resided this time for seventeen years in China, in 
high favor with Kublai, and even holding at times offices 
of important trust in his empire, till they at last came 
back, by water from the mouth of the Pei-ho, a voyage of 
eighteen months, to the mouth of the Euphrates, and re- 
appeared in Venice in the year 1295. Happily for the 
world, Marco was soon after taken prisoner by the Genoese, 
and to while away the tedium of his confinement he made 
as faithful and complete a record of his travels and obser- 
vations as his memory and notes could furnish. The work 
gained a great popularity, and was soon translated into 
almost all the languages of Europe. Its statements were 
received with not a little incredulity, but their general 
correctness has been abundantly established by the better 
knowledge since obtained. Its author’s special object 
was to describe the wealth, the institutions, the manners 
and the customs, of the Chinese empire, and the power 
and grandeur of its sovereign, and he but seldom touches 
upon matters which concern foreign commerce and for- 
eign religions ; yet it is evident from his occasional men- 


CHINA AND THE WEST. 105 


tion of Christian, Mohammedan, and Jewish communi- 
ties and churches in the Chinese cities, that both the 
Nestorian missions and the Arab commerce had recov- 
ered from the state of prostration in which the fall of the 
Tang had left them four hundred years before. The pol- 
icy of the great founder of the Mongol dynasty himself 
was eminently liberal and enlightened: foreigners of 
every race were received by him with kindness, and en- 
tire freedom of faith was allowed throughout his domin- 
ions. 

Fifty years after Marco Polo, the enterprising and in- 
defatigable Arab tourist, Ibn Batuta, who has left us the 
story of his wanderings over almost every part of the 
eastern world, reached the southeastern coast of China by 
sea from India, and made his way by the routes of inland 
travel to Peking. His account of the empire both sup- 
ports and supplements that of his Venetian contempo- 
rary. He praises it as the most populous, wealthy, and 
highly cultivated country in the world ; he extols the in- 
dustry and the mechanical and artistic skill of its inhab- 
itants, the beauty and abundance of the porcelain and silk- 
stuffs, the greatness of the cities, the pomp and splendor 
of the court and capital. He notices the use of paper 
money, the care taken of human life, and the unparalleled 
safety assured to travelers. He tells of Moslem commu- 
nities in every important city, dwelling and practicing 
their religion in security, and governed and judged ac- 
cording to their own laws by authorities chosen from 
among themselves. In the great metropolis of Khansa 
(supposed to be the place more recently called Nanking), 
he describes one of the six quarters of which the city was 
composed as peopled exclusively by Jews, Parsis, and 
Christians. This is his only mention of Christians ; it 
did not enter into the plan of his story to give details 
upon such matters ; his attention was directed especially 
to the native inhabitants of the countries he visited, and 


106 CHINA AND THE WEST. 


to the condition of his own co-religionists among them. 
His exit from the empire was hastened by the internal 
troubles attending the decadence of the Mongol dynasty. 

In the mean time had taken place the first successful 
attempt of European Christianity to extend its influence 
into Eastern Asia. The effort was prompted by the in- 
stinct of self-preservation. The Mongols, early in the 
thirteenth century, had broken forth from the mountains 
and deserts of the great Asiatic plateau, overrunning, dev- 
astating, and subjecting alike the east, the south, and the 
west. Soon their terrible hordes of horsemen were press- 
ing hard the borders of Catholic Europe, and threaten- 
ing destruction to both culture and religion. In this 
emergency, while Christian sovereigns were arming for a 
combined defense of their states, the spiritual guardian of 
Christendom was likewise moved to send out peaceful 
embassies to the homes of the fierce nomads, to turn them, 
if it might be, from their savage spirit of conquest, or to 
avert their arms from Europe. Repeated missions found 
their way, between 1245 and 1260, from Rome and France 
to the camps and capitals of Tartary, and not without a 
degree of success in establishing an understanding be- 
tween Christians and Mongols. One tie of common inter- 
est united them: both alike were the foes of the Moham- 
medan sultans of Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor, who had 
checked and baffled their plans of aggrandizement. On 
the one hand, the crusades were just ending in ignomin- 
ious failure and defeat; on the other hand, here was the 
rock from which the tide of Mongol conquest was rolled 
back. The first burst of their strength and fury had 
spent itself, and Europe was safe. The names of Carpini 
and Rubruquis are conspicuous among those of the papal 
emissaries who visited the homes of the Mongol race, and 
returned, bringing back valuable information to Europe, 
and pointing out the way to Christian missionaries to a new 
field of effort. It was at once occupied. Missions were 


CHINA AND THE WEST. 107 


soon scattered here and there over Central Asia; ana 
hardly had Marco Polo left Peking when John of Monte- 
Corvino, the first Catholic missionary to China, entered it. 
Complete liberty. of preaching and proselyting was al- 
lowed him ; his mission flourished, in spite of Nestorian 
opposition ; after some years numerous and repeated rein- 
forcements were sent out, and placed under his direction 
as Archbishop of Peking, and it seemed for a time as if 
Catholic Christianity had at last taken firm root all over 
the remote East. 

But these flattering prospects were soon eclipsed. The 
breaking up of the Mongol empire, only a century after 
its first establishment, was attended with commotions 
which almost extinguished both eastern and western 
Christianity in Asia. In China itself, the catastrophe 
was complete. About the year 1368, after the usual pe- 
riod of distress and civil war, the Mongols were driven 
out, and a native dynasty, the Ming, seated upon the 
throne. A great reaction took place in favor of the na- 
tive institutions, and against everything that was distinct- 
ively foreign. ‘The Christian teachers had enjoyed the 
protection of the expelled dynasty ; like it they had come 
in from the West ; their origin and their sympathies were 
beyond the borders of the empire. With it, then, they 
were driven out, or their weak establishments went down 
amid the general confusion, and could not be revived. 
Parties of missionaries sent out from Europe were never 
heard from again. Even the Nestorian faith, which had 
so long survived all revolutions and changes of dynasty, 
now utterly disappeared. For the first time in eight hun- 
dred years, China was free from all remnant or trace of 
Christianity. 

It is greatly to be regretted that, in the absence of all 
records of the inner history of the Nestorian missions, we 
are unable to judge respecting the causes of their long 
success and ultimate failure. We know not what posi- 


108 CHINA AND THE WEST. 


tion Nestorian Christianity maintained toward Chinese 
indifferentism and superstition ; whether it was a bold, 
faithful, and uncompromising representative of Christian 
doctrine, or inoffensively tolerant of the weakness and 
errors of those whose good it sought; whether it strove 
after a show of strength by the accession of crowds of 
nominal converts, or labored for a real success in the 
transformation of the hearts and lives of its proselytes. 
However this may have been, the final result was the 
same. It passed away, and left no abiding impression. 
Chinese history ignored it, and all remembrance of its 
presence in the empire was lost. When the next Chris- 
tian missionaries appeared, the state of China was as if 
the name of Christ had never yet been heard within its 
borders. 

More than a full century now elapsed before the re- 
newal of European intercourse with China. The redis- 
covery, so to speak, of the empire was one of the oc- 
currences which marked the close of the fifteenth and the 
beginning of the sixteenth centuries, that epoch so rich 
in great events, when the invention of printing, the ap- 
plication of the compass to its true work, the discovery 
of America, the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope, 
changed the aspect of the world, and gave such an im- 
pulse to the development of European civilization as it 
had never before received.” It was in 1487 that Diaz 
returned to Lisbon from his voyage of discovery, and 
reported that the way eastward around the continent of 
Africa was open to the maritime enterprise of western 
Europe. Ten years later a Portuguese colony, never since 
dislodged, was established under Vasco de Gama on the 
western coast of the peninsula of India; and in 1517 
a Portuguese squadron, tracing backward the route of 
Marco Polo, entered the port of Canton. This was the 
commencement of the modern era of Chinese intercourse. 

The native dynasty of Ming still sat upon the impe- 


CHINA AND THE WEST. 109 


rial throne, but had already passed the zenith of its power 
and prosperity. It had seen the extinction of Kuropean 
influence in the land; it was destined, before its down- 
fall, to behold the renewal of that influence, in more 
than the former measure. The policy of the dynasty . 
was by no means especially hostile to foreign commerce, | 
or to foreign religions. Jews and Mohammedans were 
to be found, not only in the sea-board cities, but far in 
the interior of the empire ; and they enjoyed entire tol- 
eration, because themselves quiet and inoffensive, and 
menacing with danger neither the religious nor the civil 
institutions of the empire. It depended altogether upon 
the character of the new comers how they should be 
met. Had the Europeans shown themselves peaceful in 
their policy and moderate in their demands, and had 
they awakened no jealous fear by their conduct in other 
parts of the East, we have no reason to suppose that any 
restrictions of especial severity would have been imposed 
upon them. 

Unfortunately, they gave the Chinese, at the outset, a 
very unfavorable impression of their character. The first 
Portuguese expedition, indeed, conducted itself peaceably, 
and, being kindly met, effected a satisfactory and prof- 
itable exchange of the commodities it brought. But 
while a Portuguese embassy was on the way to Peking, 
to arrange terms of future intercourse, a second fleet, 
newly arrived at Canton, fell to burning, murdering, and 
plundering, as if a mere band of lawless freebooters. In- 
telligence of this, as well as of the predatory conquests 
made by the Portuguese in Malacca, among the very al- 
lies and dependents of the empire, reached the capital 
with the envoys. ‘The result was what might have been 
expected. The ambassadors were treated as spies and im- 
postors, and sent back in chains to Canton, where, chanc- 
ing to arrive at the same time with the commission of 
new outrages, they were put to death, or detained in 


110 CHINA AND THE WEST. 


permanent captivity. Still the visits of the Portuguese 
were not altogether and permanently interdicted. They 
formed profitable establishments in many of the ports of 
the empire, and after 1560 were allowed to establish a 
kind of colony at Macao, at the mouth of the Canton River, 
which long continued to be the head-quarters of European 
commerce, and the chief station of the Catholic missions. 
_ The Spaniards first approached the coast of China in 

1575, from the neighboring Philippine Islands, of which 
their recent conquest was as unfavorable a recommenda- 
tion to Chinese hospitality as they could possibly have had. 
The injustice and impolicy of their government of the 
islands, and especially their cruelty to the numerous Chi- 
nese emigrants to Manila, produced later distinctly trace- 
able effects upon the Chinese policy toward all Europeans, 

The Dutch, too, did what they could to add to the evil 
reputation of Europe in China. At their first appearance 
they came as enemies of the Portuguese, and offended 
the government by an attack upon Macao, which was 
still Chinese territory, although tenanted by foreigners ; 
being beaten off there, they seized upon the Pescadores, 
a cluster of islands lying just off the coast, a little far- 
ther to the north. 

The first visit of the English, in 1637, was also at- 
tended with unfortunate circumstances, ominous of any- 
thing but harmony and a good understanding in the 
future ; although, if we may trust the accounts given, 
the chief blame was this time with the Chinese; since 
the latter, led astray by the false and malicious represen- 
tation of their intentions made by the Portuguese, com- 
menced an unprovoked attack upon them. It was fiercely 
and successfully resented; and after the capture of the 
forts which had been guilty of the outrage, explanations 
were entered into, and apologies made, and the intruding 
vessels were allowed to exchange their cargoes before leay- 
ing the river. No further intercourse was had with Eng- 
land or her colonies until 1664. 


CHINA AND THE WEST. 111 


When we take duly into account all these untoward 
occurrences attendant upon the reopening of commercial 
intercourse between the East and the West, and the gen- 
erally aggressive character, half freebooting, half con- 
quest-making, belonging to the adventurous. expeditions 
of the Western traders, we can hardly think it strange 
that the Chinese should have met the new foreign com- 
merce in a very different spirit from that with which they 
had greeted the old. Distrust, fear, and aversion became 
the determining motives of the policy which they adopted 
toward their visitors. That it was not based merely 
upon haughty and contemptuous self-sufficiency, indiffer- 
ence to commerce, and blind intolerance of foreigners and 
their manners and institutions, is clearly evident from 
what we have seen above respecting the earlier commer- 
cial relations between China and the West, and the long 
and peaceful occupation, by Moslems, Jews, and Chris- 
tians, of domiciles in all parts of the empire. Circum- 
stances, however, did enable the government to give its 
policy a coloring of arrogant contempt. The foreign com- 
merce was, in truth, a matter of relatively small conse- 
quence to China. Compared with the domestic trade, 
which made of the interior of the country one vast market 
for the exchange of the productions of different provinces, 
its amount and the revenue it yielded were, especially at 
the first, quite insignificant. It seemed to be carried on 
solely for the benefit of the stranger, who came to supply 
his poverty from the abounding resources of the empire, 
and was able to offer in return but little of value. It is 
well known that, until the poisonous drug, opium, was 
brought in to turn the scale, the balance of exchange 
was always terribly against the foreign trader, and the 
hard specie in which he was forced to pay for his pur- 
chases was of small account in the public economy of a 
country which knew no authorized currency save paper 
and copper. Hence the foreigners appeared as suppli- 


412 CHINA AND THE WEST. 


ants, begging to be allowed to enjoy and profit by an in- 
tercourse which it was a matter of indifference to the 
other party whether they granted or refused. The Chi- 
nese were not slow to perceive and to push the advantage. 
They habitually tried how much the foreigners would 
endure of imposition and of indignity under the pressure 
of a threat to stop the trade. Neither the latter nor the 
countries from which they came were suffered to make a 
dignified and imposing figure in Chinese eyes. Any dif- 
ference between them and the petty half-civilized and 
barbarous states which bordered upon the empire, was 
studiously ignored. ‘Their embassies were made puppets 
of in the hands of a rigorous etiquette, were balked of all 
valuable results, and treated as acknowledgments of infe- 
riority and vassalage. What, indeed, were the handfuls 
of subjects who acknowledged the authority of the West- 
ern monarchs, to the hundreds of millions who bowed to 
the throne of the Son of Heaven? And of the energy, 
knowledge, and capacity which made a few countries of 
Europe, small as was the space they occupied upon the 
earth’s surface, a power greater than all the rest of the 
world together, the Chinese had little appreciation. They 
were content with and proud of their own culture, litera- 
ture, and social and political institutions, all of immemo- 
rial antiquity ; and, in the true spirit of a stiffened civil- 
ization, they misapprehended and contemned whatever 
was discordant with it ; and what they were compelled to 
acknowledge only heightened their fear and distrust, and 
made their exclusive policy more stringent. 

The political condition of the empire was not without 
its influence upon the treatment of the foreigners. The 
dynasty of Ming had built itself up on the expulsion of a 
foreign domination, and the reassertion of Chinese na- 
tionality ; and the Manchu dynasty, which succeeded it, 
itself intrusive, and conscious of its insecure hold upon 
power, was naturally jealous of the presence and influence 


CHINA AND THE WEST. 113 


of the races which were overturning and founding empires 
in so many other parts of Asia. 

It was, then, as we conceive, mainly from apprehen- 
sion, and in self-defense, that impediment after impedi- 
ment was thrown in the way of free intercourse with 
Europeans, that the avenues of access were one after an- 
other closed, until, just a century since, European com- 
merce was limited to the one port of Canton, and other- 
wise placed under severe and oppressive restrictions. 
And we are compelled to acknowledge that, however 
much there may have been in it of narrow-mindedness 
and ignorance, there was also political sagacity, and a 
true instinct of self-preservation. The consequences of a 
want of like foresight elsewhere are apparent, in the 
overthrow of native institutions, and the establishment 
of European supremacy, in the fairest portions of both 
the Old and New worlds. We can hardly avoid being 
touched with some compunction, at witnessing the final 
failure of a plan of national conduct so long and perse- 
veringly pursued; and the forcible intrusion, on a scale 
that shakes the fabric of Chinese empire to its founda- 
tions, of the influence so anxiously excluded. 

It remains for us to review the history of the efforts 
made since the epoch of modern intercourse to introduce 
Christianity into China, or the history of the Catholic 
and Protestant missions. 

During the sixteenth century, the Catholic church, al- 
though feeling at home the staggering effect of the sever- 
est blows ever struck at its supremacy, was in the midst 
of a career of active and successful propagandism abroad. 
This was especially the case after the foundation of the 
order of Jesuits, about the middle of the century. Jesuit 
missionaries accompanied nearly all the fleets which bore 
Spanish and Portuguese adventurers to the various parts 
of the newly opened world. One of Loyola’s original 


associates, St. Francis Xavier, the apostle of the Indies 
8 


114 ) CHINA AND THE WEST. 


and of Japan, made the earliest attempt to establish a 
mission in China; but he died in 1552, upon the borders 
of the empire, before he had succeeded in overcoming the 
difficulties thrown in his way, more by his own country- 
men than by the Chinese. The Jesuit Ricci was the 
first who effected an entrance. He was suffered to pass 
the frontier about 1580, after years of delay and negoti- 
_ ation, and for a long time he preached and taught in the 
neighborhood of Canton. This, however, was to him 
only the school in which to fit himself for a higher and 
wider field of action. Not content with the precarious 
toleration which the provincial authorities allowed him, 
he sought to win for Christian missionaries such a position 
in the very heart of the country as should command uni- 
versal toleration, and should recommend Christianity to 
the acceptance of the masses of the people. He pushed 
forward from point to point, more than once rebuffed and 
driven back to his old place, until at last, in 1601, he was 
admitted to the capital, and was able to found there the 
Jesuit mission, which, for more than two hundred years, 
maintained an existence always remarkable and often full 
of honor and success. ‘The character which he impressed 
upon the mission it retained through its whole history. 
He was a man of vast acquirements and no ordinary ca- 
' pacity ; he was versed in literature, philosophy, and sci- 
ence, an accomplished representative of the best culture 
of the West. He felt the vast superiority of European 
knowledge and skill in its application over those of the 
Chinese, and his aim was to utilize that superiority in 
every possible way for the benefit of European religion. 
His science had won him great consideration at Nanking; 
the curious instruments which he brought as presents 
opened to him the gates of the capital and of the court ; 
like influences procured him the imperial permission to re- 
main, spite of the opposition of the Board of Rites, under 
whose jurisdiction such matters properly fell. Thus it 


CHINA AND THE WEST. 115 


continued to be from that time forth. The Peking mission 
became a kind of European Academy, filled with men emi- 
nent for learning and ability, selected with reference to the 
wants, and often by the express request, of the emperor ; 
men who placed themselves and their knowledge at the 
disposal of the state, filled high offices, executed important 
trusts, and by their usefulness as mathematicians, geogra- 
phers, astronomers, mechanicians, artists, teachers, and 
by the respect and influence thereby assured to them, 
were able to maintain for a long time the struggle in be- 
half of Christianity against the ever growing fear and jeal- 
ousy of it on the part of the general government of the 
empire. ‘This was a bold and brilliant system of tactics, 
and it held out high hopes of success ; had the times and 
the places been more propitious, it might have won such 
a triumph in the East as when, in the West, the Roman 
empire was converted to Christianity. But it was also 
not without its special dangers, as it brought the new 
faith and its defenders into more conspicuous opposition 
with the native institutions and their representatives, 
and awakened political and scientific, as well as religious, 
jealousies and hatreds. In the end it failed utterly. 
Niggardly toleration for a season was the best boon it 
could obtain for Christianity ; the state policy of exclu- 
sion of everything foreign, as being valueless to the wel- 
fare, and dangerous to the stability, of the empire, held 
inexorably on its way ; while the missionaries were hon- 
ored at Peking, and suffered to worship as they would, 
their religion was proscribed and persecuted everywhere 
else. ‘The mission sank into the unhappy position of a 
knot of personal satellites of the emperor, and unrewarded 
servants of the empire, and at last became extinct. We 
will briefly trace its history during the interval. 

As soon as the news of Ricci’s success reached the 
West, he was appointed Superior of all the Chinese mis- 
sions, and a numerous band of laborers was sent out to 


116 CHINA AND THE WEST. 


work under his direction. For some time all went well. 
But, shortly after Ricci’s death, the opposition of those 
who were jealous of European influence at the capital 
prevailed, and an edict was obtained by which the mission- 
aries were expelled from the country, and all exercise of 
their religion forbidden. Many of them remained in hid- 
ing, protected by the friends they had made, both in.the 
court and among the people, and waiting for better times. 
At this period the troubles and disorders which led to the 
overthrow of the dynasty were breaking out in every 
province. ‘The friends of the missionaries succeeded in 
having them authorized to reappear, as men whose knowl- 
edge and capacity might. be made useful to the empire. 
Adam Schall, the most eminent among them, was made 
chief of the astronomical board, and, about 1640, was set 
to casting cannon for the imperial use. But the dynasty, 
oppressed at once by rebellion and foreign invasion, was 
doomed to fall ; in 1644, Peking fell into the hands, first 
of the rebels, and then of the Manchus: the latter re- 
mained its masters, and the masters of the empire. 

The change of dynasty made no difference in the con- 
dition of the mission, although, of course, the Christian 
communities suffered, and Christian missionary labor was 
greatly impeded, by the disturbances and civil wars 
which desolated the empire. Schall was continued in his 
offices and dignities, and received unusual marks of favor 
from the first Manchu emperor, whose attachment to 
him was excessive, and over whom he wielded a powerful 
influence. With the regents who, after the death of the 
emperor, conducted for a time the affairs of state dur- 
ing the minority of his son, afterwards the great Kang-hi, 
the case was different ; and the enemies of the missiona- 
ries were able once more to set on foot a persecution more 
violent than the previous one. In 1665, the Christian 
religion was placed under ban; the missionaries were 
thrown into prison, and condemned to deportation into 


CHINA AND THE WEST. 117 


the depths of Tartary, while Schall, the chief mark for 
jealousy and hatred, was sentenced to an ignominious 
death. An earthquake prevented the execution of the 
sentence, and frightened the persecutors. Schall was re- 
leased, but immediately died. Four others were retained, 
that they might serve the empire, and the rest, twenty- 
five in number, were sent to Canton and thrust out of 
the country. 

Science once more raised the missions from their low 
estate. ‘Their chief persecutor, and Schall’s successor as 
head of the astronomical board, proved himself a terrible 
ignoramus and bungler in his profession. In constructing 
the state calendar, a matter of the highest consideration 
in China, he had even allotted to the new year an intercal- 
ary month to which it was not entitled! This and other 
errors were proved upon him by the missionaries, in pres- 
ence of the young emperor, who had now assumed the 
reins of power. ‘Their triumph was complete ; their foe 
was disgraced, and Verbiest installed in his place ; and 
the admiration and confidence of the greatest and ablest 
monarch who ever sat on the throne of China was given 
to the missionaries, never to be withdrawn. He became 
their eager pupil, and their attached friend and protector. 
The victims of the recent persecution were at once re- 
called to their old fields of labor; and some years later, 
in 1692, the emperor’s direct and sovereign authority 
carried through the tribunals, in spite of their reluctance 
and opposition, a decree which granted full toleration to 
Christianity throughout the whole empire. The reign of 
Kang-hi is the period of the greatest prosperity of the 
Catholic missions in China. It is also the period of the 
most active and honorable participation of the missiona- 
ries in the affairs of the country. Verbiest again founded 
cannon, for use in the wars against the Tartars. Ger- 
billon negotiated a treaty of peace and amity with the 
Russians on the northern frontier. The emperor was 


118 ; CHINA AND THE WEST. 


cured of a dangerous fever by the use of quinine. The 
great work of constructing an accurate map of the whole 
empire was successfully accomplished. 

An unfavorable change, which, even before the close 
of the reign of Kang-hi, came over the condition and 
prospects of the Chinese mission, was due to dissensions 
among the missionaries themselves. Ricci had been 
very tolerant of the weaknesses of Chinese character and 
the prejudices of Chinese education, and had sought to 
adapt to them, so far as was possible, the doctrine which 
he preached. He had seen no sufficient objection to per- 
mitting the practice of those ceremonies of official and 
ancestral worship which made up the substance of the 
orthodox state and popular religion. He regarded them 
as the ‘* peculiar institution ” of the empire, which had a 
civil character merely, and upon which it was highly un- 
advisable to lay a disturbing finger, lest the great work | 
of spreading the gospel among the benighted heathen of 
the empire should thereby suffer hindrance ; for every 
religion which had as yet obtained permanent foothold in 
the country had been compelled to respect and adopt 
those venerable rites. His view was a highly politic, 
but probably also a sincere, one; and it was correct, at 
least so far as this, that the Chinese generally performed 
the ceremonies as mere inherited forms, connecting no 
idolatrous or other meaning with them. Unquestion- 
ably, however, they were by origin, and in their real nat- 
ure, superstitious and idolatrous, and it could be but a 
degraded and lifeless Christianity which would perma- 
nently tolerate them. Differences of opinion respecting 
their character and the manner in which they were to be 
dealt with had prevailed from the beginning among the 
Jesuits themselves ; yet these, as a body, adopted the 
views of Ricci. The Dominicans and missionaries of other 
orders as generally condemned them. The dispute, ag- 
gravated by the rivalry of the monastic orders, and even 


CHINA AND THE WEST. 119 


by political and national jealousies, long raged high, 
greatly to the scandal of the unbelievers and the detri- 
ment of the missions. Both sides appealed to Rome, 
and several discordant decisions were, in the course of 
the seventeenth century, provisionally pronounced by the 
Holy See, subject to revision upon further examination ; 
yet the scale evidently leaned strongly against the views 
defended by the Jesuits. The latter were then so indis- 
creet as vastly to complicate the question by appealing 
to their friend and patron, the emperor, and making him 
a party to its adjudication. He, himself an eclectic and 
an indifferent in matters of religion, as Chinese emperors 
have long been wont to be, pronounced a decision, as 
was to be expected, in favor of the Jesuits and of the 
Chinese rites, declaring the latter to be free from all 
taint of idolatry, and altogether innocent and _praise- 
worthy. But unfortunately, after the maturest deliber- 
ation, the case was decided at Rome the other way. 
Here were two irresistible forces, the infallibility of the 
pope and the universal authority of the emperor, form- 
ally arrayed in opposition to one another; neither could 
give way, but the missions had to feel the direful effects 
of their collision. Repeated embassies from the pope to 
the emperor only led to violent disputes, and to the exile, 
imprisonment, and persecution of the legates ; while the 
imperial favor was withdrawn from the missions, and 
the continued toleration of the missionaries within the 
borders of the empire made conditional upon their giving 
a promise in writing to make no opposition to the rites, 
and to remain all their lives in the country. Hardly, how- 
ever, had the last papal legate returned from his futile 
mission, when, in 1722, the great Kang-hi died. 
Yung-ching, his son and successor, was a ruler of abili- 
ties not unworthy of his father, but a man of stern tem- 
per, and who cared little for the society and personal in- 
structions of the missionaries. As the personal protection 


120 CHINA AND THE WEST. 


of the emperor had long been the main defense of the 
missions, prohibition and persecution now immediately 
followed. In answer to the expostulations of his Euro- 
pean servants at Peking, the emperor gave them, with his 
own mouth, the explanation of the course which he deemed 
it for the interests of the empire to pursue, using these re- 
markable words: ‘* You wish all the Chinese to become 
Christians, and your law requires it; that I know very 
well. But in that case, what should we be? the subjects 
of your kings? Your Christians recognize none but you ; 
in times of trouble they would listen to no voice but 
yours. I know that at present there is nothing to fear; 
but when your vessels should come by the thousands and 
tens of thousands, there would be trouble.” 

We have here the key to the whole policy of the Chi- 
nese, in respect to both the religion and the commerce of 
the West, as it was gradually developed and established, 
under the most enlightened sovereigns who have ever 
ruled over the empire. Their intolerance of Christianity 
had no religious motive ; but they feared the men of Eu- 
rope. They feared them for the very qualities which they 
admired in them, and turned to their own profit — for 
their energy of character and their vastly superior knowl- 
edge. They could bear the growth of no such powerful 
influence as Christianity might be expected to become, to 
the decay of the native institutions, the ruin of the ruling 
dynasty, and the final imposition of a foreign domination. 

The history of the Chinese missions after the death of 
Kang-hi may be told in few words. ‘The prohibitory 
edict of Yung-ching was never repealed. The mission- 
aries at Peking were allowed to remain, to recruit their 
numbers from time to time, to retain their civil offices 
and dignities, and to practice by themselves the cere- 
monies of their religion; but as Christian missionaries 
they were forbidden to labor, nor was the presence of 
Europeans tolerated except at the capital. Yet, dur- 


CHINA AND THE WEST. 121 


ing this and the following reigns, the exiled laborers stole 
quietly back to their posts, and continued their old labors 
in secret, and under the constant dread of discovery. 
This was, indeed, the best and most heroic epoch of 
Catholic Christianity in China; the annals of the church 
can hardly show more noble examples of self-devotion, of 
persevering labor in the midst of discouragement and 
danger, of patient endurance of a life of hardships, of 
fortitude and resignation in meeting torture and death, 
than were exhibited by the Chinese missionaries. Nota 
few of the native Christians were also called to yield up 
life, or to go into distant exile, for their religion ; and 
most of them, if we may believe the accounts handed 
down to us, worthily stood the test; while the success of 
the work of proselyting was hardly less than it had been 
in the haleyon days of European influence at the imperial 
court. 

To the brief rule of Yung-ching succeeded, in 1736, the 
long and prosperous reign of Kien-lung, ending with his 
‘abdication in 1796. The attachment of the latter to his 
European artists, mechanicians, and astronomers, was very 
great, but he adhered inflexibly to the established policy 
of prohibition of Christianity in the empire, and a slight 
relaxation of the vigilance and violence of the local au- 
thorities of the provinces in discovering and punishing its 
sectaries was the nearest approach to toleration which 
could be made during all the latter part of the century 
which had opened with such signs of promise. But now 
troubles of another kind came to interrupt the progress 
of the missions. ‘The order of Jesuits was suppressed. 
The French revolution put an end to the special support 
which the Chinese mission had long received from the 
French government, and the troubled state of Psaiestiedd 
and the prostration of the Romish church, cut 
sources of supply, both of laborers and of 
support. ‘The Peking mission grew wea 


122 , CHINA AND THE WEST. 


and in 1820 Tao-kwang, upon his accession to the throne, 
drove out its last remaining representative. Yet has the 
Catholic church never relinquished its hold upon China ; 
its numerous missionaries still traverse the empire in dis- 
guise, keeping up in every city the long established com- 
munities of Christians; and its votaries are still counted 
even by hundreds of thousands. It would, however, be 
an error to account Catholic Christianity as a power 
among the Chinese people, or even as having any vital 
and: self-sustaining force in the empire. There is reason 
to apprehend that its victories have ever been nominal 
more than real; that its standard of proselytism has been 
fixed far lower than would satisfy the requirements of 
the Protestant missions. It is not especially difficult to 
win, from a people so little attached to any religion of 
its own as the Chinese, a verbal acknowledgment of the 
truth of Christian doctrine, submission to baptism, and 
partial or occasional compliance with the ceremonial prac- 
tices of the Romish church ; to communicate a real knowl- 
edge of Christianity, and the possession of its spirit, is — 
something very different. That the great majority of the 
millions of converts reckoned by the Catholic missions 
since their establishment have been converts in form only, 
is past all reasonable doubt; it were uncharitable to at- 
tempt to say just how many may have been of another 
character. Some appreciation of the spirit in which the 
later missionary operations are carried on may be won from 
the fact that a considerable item among them is the bap- 
tizing, under false pretenses and by unconsecrated hands, 
of infants considered to be at the point of death from 
sickness. At all events, even Catholics can hardly refuse 
to acknowledge that Catholic Christianity has as com- 
pletely failed to make conquest of China, or to establish 
itself firmly and securely within the limits of the empire, 
as did its predecessor, Nestorian Christianity. 

Since the beginning of the present century a new era 


CHINA AND THE WEST. 123 


of missionary effort has been inaugurated, under the au- 
spices of the Protestant societies of England, Germany, 
and America. With the history of this movement our 
readers are already too well acquainted to need that more 
than the briefest sketch of it should here be presented. 
The first Protestant missionary was Morrison, who landed 
in the country in 1807. The contrast between his career 
and that of Ricci well illustrates the difference in aim 
and spirit of the two missions of which they were respect- 
ively the founders. Morrison established himself in the 
most quiet manner at Canton, and devoted his attention 
especially to two works—the preparation of a diction- 
ary, and the translation of the Bible ; works intended to 
serve as auxiliaries to those who should come after him. 
He maintained a weekly religious service, but founded no 
church, and sought not to measure the usefulness of his 
mission by the number of converts made, and the degree 
of public attention excited. During his whole life—he 
died in 1834—he never set foot farther within the in- 
terior of the country than Canton. This modest and un- 
aggressive policy was rendered necessary by the changed 
condition of the empire, taken in connection with the 
natural limits to the efficiency of Protestant missionaries. 
To attempt a clandestine entrance into the interior, 
when every avenue of access was jealously guarded, and 
open instruction and proselytizing impracticable, would 
have been useless. ‘The only thing to be done was to 
begin in confessed weakness and obscurity, and to wait ; 
to lay a foundation, and to hope that better times would 
build the superstructure. All the ground accessible 
to the acknowledged missionary was soon occupied, and 
the expansion of the missions has kept even pace with 
the unclosing of the empire. During their earlier period, 
especially, attempts were made to gain influence among 
the colonies of Chinese emigrants, who are to be found 
scattered all over the coasts, and islands of the In- 


124 | CHINA AND THE WEST. 


dian and Southern oceans, wherever there is gain to be 
made by industry and enterprise; but the moderate suc- 
cess met with, and the gradual opening of China itself, 
have caused them to be for the most part relinquished. 
More than two hundred men have, during fifty years, 
been sent out by the various societies. Unlike the Jesuits, 
they have addressed themselves primarily and chiefly to 
the common people. They have published numerous edi- 
tions of the whole or parts of the Bible, in different trans- 
lations; they have reduced many of the popular collo- 
quial dialects for the first time to a written form, in 
Chinese or Roman characters, and in these or in the liter- 
ary language have composed and circulated hosts of tracts, 
and of elementary text-books in history, geography, nat- 
ural science, and the like. They have been active and 
successful in collecting and communicating knowledge of 
the language, literature, history, and institutions of the 
empire. If they are not unfrequently sneered at by the 
Catholics for the limited sphere of their labors, and for 
their misapplied activity in scattering abroad books which 
in the great majority of cases must be wasted and lost, 
the sneer is an undeserved one, and comes moreover 
with a bad grace from those who have themselves sig- 
nally failed in an opposite course of policy. The Cath- 
olic and Protestant systems have not yet come into com- 
petition with one another upon the same ground, as may 
soon be the case, in order that their relative efficiency 
may be tested. Great hopes have been built upon the 
complete opening of access to all parts. of the empire, 
which appears now imminent. Yet it should not fail to 
be borne in mind that but a small part of the obstacles 
to penetrating the country with civilizing and Christianiz- 
ing influences will thus be removed. Of all regions of 
the world, China is the hardest and least promising field 
for such labor, The whole character of the people, both 
in its positive and its negative traits, and, not less, their 


CHINA AND THE WEST. 125 


absorption in the struggle for existence forced upon them 
by the immense over-populousness of the empire, tell 
powerfully against the reception of the new doctrines ; 
and no one should be so thoughtless as to expect that, 
where Nestorian and Roman missionaries have toiled for 
centuries without any abiding harvest, there is now to be 
a speedy and notable change for the better. We should 
ourselves rejoice to see reason to believe that the Chinese 
_ are more likely to be penetrated with a new spirit, and to 
rise in the scale of nations, from free intercourse with 
Europeans, than to lose what they already have, and to 
suffer national degradation and extinction. 


IV. 


MULLER’S CHIPS FROM A GERMAN WORK- 
SHOP. 


—o— 


OvR notice of this important work, which was pub- 
“lished in England not less than two years ago, comes a 
little late (1869). But we were willing to await the 
time when the appearance of the American (authorized) 
reprint should have put it in the hands or within the reach ° 
of more of our readers. Everybody now knows it, at least 
by repute, as one of the striking books of the decade ; as 
excelled in interest by none of Professor Miller’s former 
publications, great as has been the acceptance which these 
have won. ‘Their author has so gained the ear of the 
reading public, that anything which he may send out is 
sure of a wide circulation and the most favorable consid- 
eration. We rejoice that the present volumes come forth 
with this prestige, for they are worthy to be extensively 
studied, and cannot fail to exert a valuable influence in 
moulding the views of thoughtful men. They are in ad- 
vance of the general opinion, but in the direction in which 
that opinion seems to be moving. ‘The mode of their 
usefulness is twofold: as they furnish authentic informa- 
tion respecting the religious ideas and mythical fancies of 
periods and races lying outside our European Christian 
civilization ; and as they instigate us to view these in 


1 Chips from a German Workshop. By Max Miiller, M. A., ete. Vol. I. 
Essays on the Science of Religion. Vol. 11. Essays on Mythology, Traditions, 
and Customs. New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1869. 12mo. Pp. xxxv., 
874, and 402. 


MULLER’S CHIPS FROM A GERMAN WORKSHOP. 127 


their right relation to one another and to Christianity. 
No one living, probably, is better qualified than Professor 
Miller for the task which he has here undertaken. His 
specialty, the study of the Veda, sets him in the very 
heart of the myths and creeds and rites of the Indo-Euro- 
pean peoples ; and hardly any one has studied them more 
deeply, or in a more original spirit, than he. ‘The circle 
of Vedic divinities and their Greek correspondents are 
his most engrossing theme; but he is hardly less full 
upon the subject of the Zend-Avesta ; while the mono- 
theism of the Semites, the dry utilitarian precepts of 
Confucius, the dizzying doctrines of Buddhism, and the 
simple beliefs of half-civilized American aborigines, re- 
ceive also not a little of his attention. Such trustworthy 
and comprehensive information, so attractively presented 
within so brief compass, is not elsewhere to be found by 
the student of the general religious history of mankind. 
Made up, as it is, of independent essays, collected and re- 
printed with little change, the work has not the order 
and completeness of a systematic treatise ; but it is more 
easily read than such a treatise would be; each essay is a 
whole in itself, and not long enough to fatigue the atten- 
tion of any one who is capable of deriving profit from the 
instruction it offers. There is also, it must be confessed, 
some repetition, which we might wish that the author had 
been willing, by a little additional labor in rewriting, to 
avoid; yet the fault is one of trivial consequence in com- 
parison with the solid merits of the work. 

So large, and so much the most important, part of the 
two volumes deals with religions, that the work as a 
whole is fairly to be reckoned as religious, although only 
the first volume purports by its title to be such. That 
title, by the way, is not quite happily chosen : the preface 
alone is of the nature of an “‘ essay on the science of relig- 
ion;” the rest are rather essays on specific religions, as 
contributions to a science of religion, This science the 


128  MULLER’S CHIPS FROM A GERMAN WORKSHOP. 


author would fain see constructed after the model of the 
science of language, and founded upon a comparative 
study of all the religions which prevail or have prevailed 
upon the earth, and upon an understanding of them as 
the diverse products and expressions of one universal re- 
ligious faculty or instinct. He pleads with much fervor 
and eloquence for the free and impartial submission of all 
religions, Christianity included, to this scientific investi- 
gation, this historical and comparative examination ; urg- 
ing in its favor the authority of the old Christian Fathers, 
and the advantage certain to accrue to us in the better 
comprehension and estimation of our own religion, not 
less than of those with which it is compared. He earn- 
estly protests, at the same time, against the prevailing 
judgment of heathen religions as products of human 
depravity, sacrilegious devil-worships, worthy of unmixed 
condemnation ; and insists upon their claim to be regarded 
as earnest, though erring, attempts on the part of short- 
sighted humanity to solve the same great problems to 
which our own faith is an answer. 

Professor Miller fully recognizes the difficulty of per- 
suading the great body of those who hold the Christian 
religion to let it become the object of a scientific scrutiny, 
along with the rest, as if it were of like substance with 
these. Their feelings are almost invincibly opposed to 
such treatment. Their religion, to them, is no product of 
a human instinct, but a body of absolute truth, supernat- 
urally revealed, and obtainable in no other way. Nor are 
Christians alone likely to be found impracticable. The 
sincere advocates of every creed under heaven will insist 
on making a similar reservation. You may analyze and 
compare other men’s religions as you will, tracing their 
various features to certain traits of human nature, or in- 
fluences of human history and institutions ; but each one’s 
own faith is something of a different class. The Moslem 
has authority for all that he believes, in the infallible in- 


MULLER’S CHIPS FROM A GERMAN WoRKSHOP. 129 


spiration of his prophet; the Brahman claims that his 
_ Veda has existed from all eternity, and is itself a founda- 
tion of truth, undemonstrable and unassailable; the 
Buddhist vaunts the superhuman wisdom and power of 
the dreamy ascetic who taught him to aspire to extinc- 
tion — and so with the rest. Only the Chinese, who 
have never arrogated to their great teacher anything but 
superior insight and purity of heart, will be liberal enough 
to join heartily with the votaries of the new science, 
along with those who elsewhere may have risen, or fallen, 
into a Chinese indifferentism. It is in vain to tell each 
one that, if his creed really contains the essence of divine 
wisdom, the most searching and impartial study and com- 
parison will only bring its superiority more clearly to 
light: he will see an indignity in the very quest. 

But even those who allow the impartial comparison of 
all religions have room to doubt the feasibility of a sci- 
ence of religion. Religion is so intricately intertwined 
with the whole of human thought and action that it 
hardly admits of being separated and considered apart, 
completely and distinctly. Its substance — human opin- 
ions and convictions — is of too subjective a character to be 
easily and safely handled ; and the creeds which strive to 
express it, the rites and observances which it prompts, are. 
wont to be, as our author well shows, untrustworthy wit- 
nesses to its true character. They are very unlike the 
words and forms and phrases of which human speech con- 
sists: these have enough of the concrete and objective 
about them to bear scientific treatment. A science of re- 
ligion seems almost as little to be looked for as a science 
of human opinion, or of manners and customs. 

These, it may be alleged, are merely difficulties in the 
way, and the progress of study and of the enlightenment 
of general opinion will show them not to be insuperable. 
But we do not see even the possibility of a science of re- 
ligion upon just the basis which Miiller would establish 

9 


130  MULLER’S CHIPS FROM A GERMAN WORKSHOP. 


for it. If the bulk of human religions have their origin 
in the universal facts of human nature and the variety 
of human character and circumstances, then something 
like a scientific exposition of their rise and development 
may be possible; not otherwise. According to what may 
be called the naturalistic view, now accepted by many of 
the students of human history, the religious feeling is 
called forth in the first instance, and guided in its growth, 
by men’s recognition of a power without them and infi- 
nitely superior to them, manifested in the phenomena of 
the world which surrounds them ; by their irresistible dis- 
position to attribute to this power an anthropomorphous 
form or forms, paralleling its action with that which they 
best understand and see to be most efficient within the 
sphere of their own consciousness and observation ; and 
by the attempt to settle their own relation to it, and put 
themselves in communication with it, in order to the ob- 
taining of good and the averting of evil. Man is the only 
creature capable of forming the fundamental conception 
of something in nature higher and greater than himself, 
and of feeling the desire to penetrate its secrets; but he 
acquires this capacity along with his rise above his primi- 
tive and natural condition, his utterly savage state. 
There are races, even now, so sunken and absorbed in the 
lowest wants of their animal nature, that no religious idea 
has ever dawned upon their minds, any more than the 
idea of beauty, or the love of virtue. In different races 
such ideas make their appearance at different epochs of 
mental progress, and assume a very diverse form, with 
corresponding influence upon life and character. With 
some, religion is from the outset an ennobling element; 
it elevates and makes them happy ; with others, it begins 
and remains abject and cringing; it is full of dread, like 
the fear of children in the dark; it expresses itself in 
deprecatory rites, and is fertile of superstitions of every 
kind. On the whole, it follows a certain direction of ad- 


MULLER’S CHIPS FROM A GERMAN WORKSHOP. 131 


vance ; it makes its way from blinder and more childish 
views to such as are clearer and stronger; it begins with 
finding gods and demons everywhere, in its naive ascrip- 
tion of each class of phenomena to a separate agency ; it 
tends, where character and circumstances favor, toward 
the apprehension of a unity in all the varying phenomena 
of the universe, and a oneness of their creator and man- 
ager — that is to say, it tends from polytheism toward 
monotheism. | 

Now it appears to us that no one who does not take 
something like the view thus set forth of the rise and 
growth of the heathen religions has any right to talk of a 
science of religion at all; and it is at this fundamental 
point that we deem Professor Miuller’s science wanting 
in soundness and consistency. His religious philosophy 
presents a curious analogy with his linguistic philosophy. 
In language, he adopts and teaches the current methods 
of historical research, treating human speech as the prod- 
uct of a continuous process of development from ele- 
ments the most simple and formless, carried on along 
with its use, by men who have spoken it, until he gets 
back to the very beginning: there he assumes a miracle — 
not precisely a scriptural, but a kind of natural or mate- 
rialistic miracle ; namely, an original instinct, different 
from anything which men have nowadays, vouchsafed for 
the express purpose of setting in motion the process of 
linguistic development, and withdrawn when it had an- 
swered that purpose. So also, at the very fountain-head 
of all religion he finds — we must not say an instinct, 
since he criticises and rejects that word as used by Renan, 
but what is equivalent — an intuition and a feeling, ‘“‘an 
intuition of God and the immediate feeling of dependence 
on God,” which “ could only have been the result of a 
primitive revelation.” This intuition he regards as 
neither monotheistic nor polytheistic ; and its natural ex- 
pression is simply the dogma, “ Godis God.”  Else- 


132  MULLERS CHIPS FROM A GERMAN WORKSHOP. 


where he calls it a “feeling of sonship,” and qualifies it 
as henotheistic— that is to say,as not apprehending or 
believing in more gods than one, although at the same 
time not consciously holding the unity of God. 

So far as this is intelligible to us, it is altogether un- 
satisfactory. If Muller means simply to maintain that, © 
before the distinct and conscious recognition of a plu- 
rality of gods, there must have existed in the minds of 
untutored men a dim and undefined apprehension of an 
extra-human force or forces at work in the world about 
them, he is only presenting in a somewhat peculiar form 
the prevailing view stated above. But his phraseology 
does not fairly imply this; it seems hardly accordant 
with any other theory than that of an original paradisiac 
condition of man, as a being with powers miraculously 
developed and knowledge stored up by superhuman 
means, instead of such a one as any of us might have 
been if flung at birth into a desert land and nurtured by 
_ wild beasts. We do not suppose that our author holds 
such a theory, although he nowhere, that we have noticed, 
expresses himself distinctly either for or against it. 
Doubtless he believes in a general upward progress of 
mankind since the earliest ages, in the gradual develop- 
ment of powers at first possessed unconsciously, in the 
accumulation of knowledge and the acquisition of the 
power to use it and reason upon it. That the untaught 
and undeveloped generations of men were capable of an 
intuition of God, and a feeling of sonship, seems to us 
quite inconceivable: we fail to see upon what good 
ground the assumption can be maintained as plausible. 
So far as Miller himself attempts to support it by argu- 
ment and illustration, he is not very successful. Thus, 
to prove the priority of monotheism, he alleges the fact 
that ‘‘in no language does the plural exist before the 
singular.” But the same fact, it is evident, would equally 
prove that the existence of one sole tree or bird was be- 


ad MULLER’S CHIPS FROM A GERMAN WORKSHOP. 133 


lieved in before that of many trees or birds ; that men were 
monodruists and monornithists before they became poly- 
druists and polyornithists. If we do not misunderstand 
him, he would account for the separation of one God into 
many gods in such ways as this: Men first said tonat, 
Bpovre, meaning ‘ he thunders ’—that is to say, he, the 
one God. ‘Then, since the thunder came from the sky, 
they occasionally said also ‘* the sky thunders ;” and this 
mode of speech grew into a habit, so that finally “he” 
and ‘¢ the sky” became irretrievably mixed together in 
their minds, ‘‘ by the almost irresistible force of language,” 
and they confusedly looked upon the latter as one of the 
names of the former. And, having committed similar 
confusions in speaking of other manifestations of the one 
supreme deity, they found themselves all at once in pos- 
session of a set of names for him, as sky (Jupiter, Zevs) 
and so on, which they imagined to be names of so 
many distinct beings. And so they fell into polytheism. 

We should be very glad to make an exposition of this 
peculiar theory which should be less implausible and even 
self-refuting, but we know not how to do so. It attrib- 
utes to words a kind of power over the mind which we 
can only compare to jugglery, and which we cannot but 
regard as inconsistent with any sound view of human 
speech. It is not, however, altogether at variance with 
opinions respecting language which our author has else- 
where expressed. He inclines generally to regard words 
as the masters rather than the servants of ideas, holding 
that the former condition the latter, instead of being pro- 
duced for their service, and that no abstract conception is 
for a moment possible without a vocable expressing it. 
Thus, also, in the essay on ‘“‘ Semitic Monotheism,” from 
which we have taken a part of the expressions quoted or 
referred to above, he combats with much vigor Renan’s 
theory of an original monotheistic tendency in the char- 
acter of the Semitic races (Hebrews, Arabs, etc.), and 


184  MULLERS CHIPS FROM A GERMAN WORKSHOP. 


ascribes whatever may be peculiar to them in this regard 
to the peculiarity of their- language, the radical meaning 
in their words being much more persistent than in those 
of other tongues — a Semitic epithet remaining an epithet 
merely, while in Indo-European languages, for example, 
its origin is readily forgotten, and it assumes the value 
of a specific designation. The Semite could never be 
cheated into imagining that, in the phrase Zebs Bpovra, Zeds 

signified a being instead of a part of the material cre- 
ation, because its appellative meaning, ‘the bright,’ or 
‘shining,’ would not be wholly lost from memory. ‘This 
characteristic feature of Semitic speech is very suitably 
brought in as an element in the discussion; but most 
scholars, we are persuaded, will think that Miller over- 
estimates its importance, and that his solution of the 
problem is, to say the least, not more satisfactory than 
that of the author he opposes. The Semites have man- 
aged to find real names for all the objects they have wished 
to designate ; and if their mythopeeic or theopeeic tendency 
had been as pronounced as that of the leading Indo-Euro- 
pean races, we see no reason to believe that they would not 
have fabricated as many myths, and believed in as many 
gods. In fact, as our author points out, if all the Semitic 
races are taken into view, it 1s found that they have been 
polytheistic enough ; and he ascribes their exalted doc- 
trine of one God directly to the one man Abraham, whom 
he believes to have received it by divine revelation. So 
that, after all, it appears that the original intuition of one 
God, even when aided by the unyielding processes of 
Semitic word-formation, has not been able to furnish the 
later world with a single monotheistic religion. It is not 
without show of reason that Miller rejects Renan’s theory 
of a Semitic “instinct” for monotheism, as refuted by 
the general Semitic worship of Baal, Moloch, Ashtaroth, 
and the rest; but what shall we think of his own univer- 
sal ‘* intuition” of humanity, which in every race under 


MULLER’S CHIPS FROM A GERMAN WORKSHOP. 185 


heaven has been blinded and baffled by its own blunder- 
ing attempt at expression, arid of which the appointed 
office has had to be filled by a later superhuman agency ? 
The vexed question of Semitic monotheism is much too 
recondite to be followed out here; we can only touch 
upon it in passing ; and would say to our readers that 
two more eloquent and interesting articles than those of 
Renan and Miller upon it are not easily to be found in 
the whole range of discussion upon this class of subjects. 
There is yet another point, closely connected with 
those already treated, in regard to which our author ap- 
pears to us not less guilty of exaggerating the influence 
of expression; and it is a point of prime consequence. 
Mythology, not less than polytheism, is laid by him at 
the door of language. His views as to the relation of 
myths and words are drawn out more fully in the second 
series of his Lectures on Language than in the present 
work; yet the second volume of Chips contains his cel- 
ebrated Oxford Essay on Comparative Mythology, which 
sketched the outline of his whole system, and even brought 
forward many of the details which have attracted the at- 
tention of scholars, and led to no small comment and con- 
troversy. He goes so far as to declare mythology a kind 
of “disease of language,” and to maintain that men were 
led along into mythic fancies, as into a belief in many 
gods, without their own knowledge and almost against 
their own will, by the overpowering influence of the 
phrases they used. It may be that his expressions do 
him partial injustice, and that his views are not so differ- 
ent from those of other scholars as they appear to be; 
but we are persuaded that he at any rate presents the 
subject in a false light, and lays an unsound and unten- 
able foundation for the whole study of myths. We at 
the present day say, ‘“‘ The wind dashes the rain against 
the house,” “The cloud darts lightnings at the earth,” 
and so on, in what we call figurative or poetic phrase, 


136  MULLER’S CHIPS FROM A GERMAN WORKSHOP. 


without running the least risk of sliding away into a be- 
lief that the wind and cloud are superhuman beings, act- 
ing after the manner of men. Why is this? Because, 
says Professor Miller, words have less power over us 
than over the ancient generations ; because our thought . 
is withered ; because our language is not suffering under 
that specific disease: and more of the same sort. But 
in this he is himself a mythopceist. One of the essential 
‘parts of myth-making is the substitution of an analogy 
for an explanation. To express by a figure something 
which is only half-understood. or wholly obscure, then to 
dwell upon the figurative expression as if it were a true 
definition, and let it hide from sight the thing meant to 
be expressed, is a good process in mythology, though not 
in science. What is the power of a word? <A word is 
nothing but the sign of a conception; the only force in 
action is the mind which forms the conception, and uses 
the word as its sign. Weare saved from making gods of 
the wind and cloud by the fact that we have long since 
left behind us that stage of development in which we in- 
clined to see in the works of nature the acts, and effects 
of acts, of beings similar to men. ‘This inclination, now, 
seems to us to be incontestably the true mythopeeic force, 
and it should receive the first place and consideration in 
all theoretic discussion of mythologic fancies. The lin- 
guist may then go on to show how designation by a word 
is an‘important step in the process of personification, how 
it constitutes an external support for the conceptions to 
cling to, and furnishes the means whereby the figurative 
statement is handed down more faithfully than its ex- 
planation ; so. that the two are finally divorced from one 
another, and there remains a myth, with its proper mean- 
ing unintelligible to those who report and credit it. Thus 
the study of language is proved to have a most important 
bearing upon that of mythology, although not, as our au- 
thor is inclined to claim, its actual foundation. 


MULLER’S CHIPS FROM A GERMAN WORKSHOP. 137 


As regards the details of his mythological investiga- 
tions, it is well known that Miller is at variance with 
many of the best specialists in this department on the 
continent, who regard a part of his comparisons and ex- 
planations as fanciful and erroneous, and his etymologies 
as forced. Especially, they refuse to follow him in his 
identification of almost all mythic figures with the sun or 
the dawn, and his explanation of numberless myths as 
growing out of the relation of those two manifestations. 
Whether, however, he be finally proved wrong or right, 
it is certain that he has struck a very productive vein 
and worked it in a most ingenious manner, and that the 
views he has suggested and the discussions he has stirred 
_ up cannot fail to promote the rapid advancement of the 
study of primitive religions. 

The manner and style of these essays of Miller, as of 
his larger and more serious works heretofore published, 
are worthy of high praise. No English author in this 
department has a greater power as a writer of English 
than he; none writes with more fervid thought or more 
genuinely eloquent expression. Of course, the essays. are 
not of entirely equal merit in these respects; and it 
should be especially noted that one who commences his 
perusal of the work with the first essay in the first vol- 
ume, the author’s lecture at Leeds on the Veda, will gain 
a too unfavorable idea of the whole, of which it is the 
heaviest and least attractive portion, though replete with . 
valuable information. ‘The same paper exhibits, to our 
apprehension, a rather marked tendency to. put its author 
forward as the editor of the Veda, instead of an editor of 
a Veda. The same tendency appears here and there in 
other essays. That the Rig-Veda is by far the most im- 
portant work of its class, no one will deny ; but this does 
not justify the assertion that the rest are all of a merely 
liturgical character, and have no value independent of 


this one. And if he had made the good people of Leeds 


138  MULLERS CHIPS FROM A GERMAN WORKSHOP. 


fully understand that the bulky quarto which he was at 
the pains to carry along and exhibit to them contained 
only about one part Veda and four parts modern Hindu 
commentary, of disputed worth, they might not have 
opened their eyes quite so widely with admiration. 

Professor Miiller informs us that the present volumes 
contain only a selection from his fugitive writings on the 
two classes of subjects indicated. The first includes at 
least one essay which we greatly regret that he did not 
class with those destined to oblivion. We mean that 
upon the Aitareya Braéhmana of Professor Haug. It is 
in all respects unworthy of him, being an unreserved and 
uncritical encomium of a work which, along with very 
great merits, has some striking defects, shows signs of 
hasty preparation, and unduly depreciates the labors of 
‘others in the same field. Nor is the inclusion of the essay 
recommended by any interesting discussion of points of 
general importance contained in it, or by sound and in- 
structive views upon the period of Hindu antiquity to 
which it relates; while it is especially objectionable on 
account of the note which its author has added-at the 
end. 

In the article as originally published (“ Saturday Re- 
view” for March 19, 1864), Professor Miller had been ill- 
advised enough to insert an attack upon his fellow San- 
skritists, the collaborators in the great Sanskrit lexicon 
published at St. Petersburg, charging them with having 
formed a mutual-admiration society, with the intent to 
‘sing each other’s praises in the literary journals of Rus- 
sia, Germany, and America,” and to “ speak slightingly ” 
of all outside of that circle. What had happened to call 
forth this accusation is hard to discover; unless perhaps 
that more than one of the scholars referred to had re- 
cently (without any apparent or known concert) joined 
in defending the lexicon and its authors from a very vio- 
lent and unjust attack made upon them. At any rate, 


MULLER’S CHIPS FROM A GERMAN WORKSHOP. 139 


Dr. Haug (who has quite enough merit to stand alone, 
and can afford to invite searching criticism instead of in- 
discriminate commendation) was patted on the back, and 
assured that, if his book should be spoken of unkindly “ in 
the journals of the Mutual-Praise Society,” this should 
have no effect upon the opinion of anybody whose opinion 
was worth having. In the ‘‘ Chips,” now, Miller has omit- 
ted the offensive paragraph; but he has appended to the 
essay a note which, instead of mitigating, has trebled the 
original offense. He first explains the omission, intimat- 
ing ‘the nature of the accusation made, and averring that 
he did not originate it, but merely repeated it from others, 
being convinced that there was foundation for it. He 
represents it as having been met ‘* by a very loud and 
boisterous denial.” He is sorry if he has given unnec- 
essary pain by what he has done, and hopes that in future 
no reason for similar complaint will be given; if that re- 
sult be produced, he will try to bear like a martyr the 
wrath and resentment which he has provoked. We are 
ata loss for words to characterize the cool effrontery of 
this paragraph. Its tone of magisterial assumption is not 
easily to be paralleled. Miller says, in effect, that a parcel 
of naughty persons have been caught in their naughtiness ; 
that he has administered to them deserved correction, un- 
der which they have cried out lustily ; that he is grieved 
at having had to hurt them so much, and make them so 
angry ; but comforts himself with the belief that it is for 
their good. And this to men some of whom can show 
services to Sanskrit literature far superior to his own, and 
whose reputation for single-mindedness and candor is, to . 
say the least, not less than his! 

As regards, indeed, fairness and candor, there are im- 
plications and insinuations in this note which are not cal- 
culated to increase its author’s reputation, There is, in 
the first place, the ‘‘ very loud and boisterous denial.” 
It is a pity that we are not informed where such a denial 


140  MULLER’s CHIPS FROM A GERMAN WORKSHOP. 


is to be met with; we suspect it to be a figment of Pro- 
fessor Miiller’s lively imagination. An anonymous criti- 
cism, in a periodical so little famed for impartiality and 
leniency of judgment as the “ Saturday Review,” was not 
likely greatly to disturb the peace of whomsoever it might 
be aimed at; and to those who recognized in it the hand 
of the Oxford Professor it was doubtless more worthy of 
_ attention as an illustration of personal character than in 
any other way. We are not aware that any one ever 
took public notice of it, excepting Professor Weber of 
Berlin. ‘This eminent scholar, being himself the butt at 
which both Haug and Miller had chiefly aimed their ar- 
rows, could hardly remain silent without seeming to con- 
fess inability to repel the accusations laid against him ; 
accordingly, in his Indische Studien (ix. 2, 1865), he re- 
printed the article, side by side with another very able 
and trenchant criticism of Dr. Haug’s book, written by a 
Hindu and first printed in India, for the purpose of con- 
trasting the learning and spirit of the two critics — much 
to the disadvantage of the Anglo-German ; and then, af- 
ter a few strong but dignified words in answer to the lat- 
ter’s insinuations, he proceeded to a very detailed and 
careful examination of the work which Miller had volun- 
teered to guaranty especially against any attack he might 
make upon it — discussing -it with a fullness of erudition 
certainly not at the command of any other European 
scholar, doing justice to its solid merits, but also pointing 
out, without passion and without carping, its errors and 
defects ; thus furnishing a running commentary upon it 
of the highest value, and without the assistance of which 
no unpracticed student should venture to use the work at 
all. This was Weber’s ‘denial: ” if Miiller describes it 
as “loud and boisterous,” we can only infer that it must 
have rung bodefully in his ears. 

Again, the charges of “ literary rattening”’ which our 
author says that he merely alludes to, and of which he 


MULLER’S CHIPS FROM A GERMAN WORKSHOP. 141 


shifts the burden to Dr. Haug’s shoulders, are not to be 
found in the latter’s pages at all; they appear rather to 
emanate from no other person than the scholar whose at- 
tack upon the St. Petersburg lexicon was the occasion of 
all the after-trouble. So that the plain history of the 
affair seems to be this: some one falls fiercely upon the 
work of a company of collaborators; they unite in its 
defense ; thereupon the aggressor reviles them as a mu- 
tual-admiration society ; and Miller repeats the accusa- 
tion, giving it his own indorsement, and volunteering in 
addition that of another scholar. 

Once more, Miller refers his readers, if they are curi- 
ous to see the expunged paragraphs, to the Jndische Stu- 
dien, where, he says, the review may be seen “ reprinted, 
though, as usual, very incorrectly.” It is strange that, 
writing especially for Englishmen, he does not send them 
rather to the place of original publication ; apparently, 
he could not resist the temptation to cast in passing an 
additional slur upon the man whose denial had seemed to 
him so boisterous. In this, however, he was too little 
mindful of the requirements of fair dealing ; for he leaves 
any one who may take the trouble to turn to the Indische 
Studien, and compare the version there given with that 
found among the “ Chips,” to infer that all the discordances 
he shall discover are attributable to Weber’s “ incorrect- 
ness ;”’ whereas they are in fact mainly alterations which 
Miiller has made in his own reprint; and the real inac- 
curacies are perfectly trivial in character and few in 
number — such printer’s blunders as are rarely avoided 
by Germans who print English, or by English who print 
German. We should doubtless be doing Miller injustice 
if we maintained that he deliberately meant Weber to 
bear the odium of all the discrepancies which a comparer 
might find; but he is equally responsible for the result, 
if it is owing only to carelessness on his part. 

We regard this note as by far the most discreditable 


142 MULLER’S CHIPS PROM A GERMAN WORKSHOP. 


production of Professor Miller that has ever come under 
our notice ; the epithet ‘‘ outrageous” is hardly too strong 
to apply to it. If this is to be his style of carrying on 
a literary controversy, he cannot much longer claim to be 
treated with the ordinary courtesies of literary warfare. 

It is also not quite fair and above-board that in the 
body of his article he notes with complacency, as sup- 
porting his own view of the matter, that Dr. Haug “ calls 
absurd ”’ the theories of those who hold that the lunar as- 
terisms constituting the old Hindu zodiac were probably 
devised in some other country than India. For if he had 
dared to quote Haug’s own dictum, his readers would 
have seen how weak a staff it was to lean upon. Haug is 
speaking of the observation of the solstices recorded in 
the Jyotisha, and he remarks: “ To believe that such an 
observation was imported from some foreign country, 
Babylon or China, would be absurd ; for there is nothing 
in it to show that it cannot have been made in the north- 
western part of India, or a closely adjacent country.” 
That is to say, it is absurd to believe anything the con- 
trary of which does not admit of being proved impossible ! 
Moreover, it will be noticed how far Miiller has stretched 
the bearing of the allegation of absurdity brought by his 
authority. After these two examples of his ill success in 
reporting the latter’s opinions, we should almost be justi- 
fied in adding to any further statement of his, “‘ made, as 
usual, very incorrectly.” 

In fact, we would call attention to one more very in- 
correct statement made in the course of the same review. 
He says, respecting the date of the observation above — 
referred to, that it ‘‘ has been fixed by the Rev. R. Main 
at 1186 B. c.” (altered in the reprint to ‘has been accu- 
rately fixed,” etc.). But this gentleman did nothing 
whatever toward fixing the date in question except to 
take a calculation made by Archdeacon Pratt, of Calcutta, 
and very slightly change the value of one of the factors 


MULLER’S CHIPS FROM A GERMAN WORKSHOP. 143 


in it—namely, the precession of the equinoxes. Mr. 
Pratt had estimated the precession approximately, as is 
usual in calculations of this character, at one degree in 
seventy-two years ; greater precision than this does not 
comport with the general conditions of the problem; and 
the other, by insisting upon its absolute mathematical — 
value, committed a piece of mathematical pedantry, very 
much as one who should insist on a fraction of a mile in 
estimating the distance of the sun from us. The whole 
caleulation, to be sure, is little better than worthless, and 
has been so proved ;! but if any one is to have credit for 
it, it is Archdeacon Pratt, and he alone. 

Astronomy is not one of Professor Miiller’s strong 
points, and it would be easy to show that others of his 
reasonings in this essay bearing upon astronomical sub- 
jects are unsound and without value ; but we have surely 
already said enough to prove our thesis — that the omission 
of the essay and its appended note from his next edition 
would be a notable increase of the value of the work. 
We hope that in the other pair of volumes, promised as 
the completion of the series, he will be somewhat more 
tender of his fellows’ reputation and of his own. 


The third volume of ‘Chips ”’ was issued by the au- 
thor in 1870;and neither the fourth, nor any announce- 
ment of it, has yet appeared, so that the series appears to 
be for the present brought to an end. The concluding 
volume could not expect such a career as its predecessors 
had, since it deals with subjects comparatively accessible 
and often treated, and on which the distinguished author 
has no higher authority to speak to us than a great many 
of his contemporaries. Its first paper is a really valuable 
sketch of German literature from the earliest times; it 
was originally published as introduction to a volume of 

1 See below, p. 381. 


144 MuULLERS CHIPS FROM A GERMAN WORKSHOP. 


selections from German authors. Among the slighter 
articles that follow is an account of the author’s father, 
Wilhelm Miller, a poet of real merit, though not of wide 
repute, who died while his more celebrated son was a 
very young child. ‘The collection is brought to a close 
by a lively and appreciative sketch of the life, genius, and 
labors of the author’s patron and life-long friend, the 
Chevalier Bunsen, from which many will be glad to learn 
something of the many-sided activity and noble spirit of 
that truly great man. To this biographical notice are 
added as appendix an extended series of letters from 
Bunsen to Miller, making up between a quarter and a 
third of the readable contents of the entire volume. 
Their interest as materials in the hands of a biographer of 
Bunsen, or as parts of a special and independent tribute 
to him, is undeniable; whether it was well judged to put 
them before the world as so substantial a part of Miuller’s 
collected essays, admits of more question. 

A more proper continuation of the first two volumes of 
‘¢ Chips” was given by their author early in 1870, in the 
form of four lectures ‘‘ On the Science of Religion,” pro- 
duced at the Royal Institution in London, and variously 
printed and reprinted since. These, however, are chiefly 
an expansion of the preface to the first volume of ‘ Chips,” 
together with an epitome of: part of the information as to 
particular religions contained in both volumes. They do 
not show any noteworthy progress in the author’s mind 
toward clear and definite views; they do not advance 
the plan and ground-work of the new science; and in 
point of style and interest of presentation they fall short 
of his usual standard. We venture here a further criti- 
cal remark or two, on subjects related with those which 
have been discussed in the preceding pages. 


1 Collected in a volume at New York (Scribner & Co.) in 1872 ; more recently 
(1873) by the author himself, at London, with the addition of two later lectures, 
one on the Philosophy of Mythology, and one on Mistaken Analogies in Com- 
parative Theology. 


MULLER’S CHIPS FROM A GERMAN WORKSHOP. 145 


The one all-important truth, without a recognition of 
which there can be no foundation for a scientific or fruit- 
ful study of religions, is, in our view, clearly this: that 
the early religious beliefs of every race arise out of the un- 
aided attempts of that race to explain to itself the prob- 
lem of the universe, as we may call it— the mystery 
of man’s existence, surroundings, and destiny. Every hu- 
man being finds himself placed in the midst of forces 
which are vastly more powerful than he, and indefinitely 
varied in their manifestations, and of which the action, 
while he can neither understand nor control it, is now 
helpful and now hurtful to him ; his own birth and death 
are inexplicable phenomena; the influences, in himself 
and others, which make for his happiness or unhappiness, 
he does not half comprehend ; his longings and his fears _ 
seek a support outside of himself; his consciousness of 
good or evil desert puts itself in relation with those 
awful powers which seem to govern the whole of nature. 
No race of men—if sufficiently gifted and sufficiently 
developed to have a sense for all this, or to be otherwise 
affected than struck dumb with stupid wonder at it — 
could possibly help reasoning upon it, and deriving views 
and theories and beliefs, and framing acts and ceremo- 
nies expressing them: and these, in all their variety, de- 
pending upon the various endowments and circumstances 
of the different peoples, are their religions. The religion 
of a people is even more inseparable at the outset than 
later from the general mass of its thought and opinion. 

If this fundamental truth be accepted, then the true 
method of investigation is an obvious corollary to it: the 
religion of each race must be studied as a whole, and in 
its historical connection and development. It is a his- 
torical product, the result of long growth, a structure 
built upon by generation after generation, one working 
over, modifying, and adding to that which was _ be- 


queathed it by another. The language of every race is 
10 


146  MULLER'S CHIPS FROM A GERMAN WORKSHOP. 


a similar product of similar forces, another accompani- 
ment and result of a connected historical development. 
This being so, those grand continuous communities 
(whether absolutely pure races or not) which have 
formed families of connected languages, will have formed 
related religions also: religions more or less alike, be- 
cause proceeding from the same basis, but also more or 
less diverse, because of their discordant later growth. 
This is the simple ground of the parallelism between 
religion and language—a parallelism which, in his 
third lecture, Miller misunderstands and distorts most 
strangely. Instead of joint results of ethnic unity, twin 
institutions handed down through the divergent lines of . 
relationship of each race, he makes them the causes of 
nationality, and dependent each in turn upon the other. 
It might not be easy to find a more striking example of 
unclear perception and unsound reasoning in all Miiller’s 
works than he exhibits in this lecture; and the views he 
incidentally puts forth as to the nature and history of 
language — especially as to its originally wild and chaotic 
condition, and its concentration, in three special. cases, 
into families of related speech, by an unnatural and ex- 
ceptional process, originating in the spontaneous act. of 
certain remote generations — are unintelligible and inde- 
fensible, at variance with his own soundest teachings 
hitherto, and subversive of the science of language which 
he claims to have done so much to establish. 

In criticising and setting aside certain superficial 
classifications of religions (which were, perhaps, hardly 
worth so much attention, since they would disappear of 
themselves in presence of a right method), Miller has 
forgotten to notice the most important distinction of all 
— that between, on the one hand, ethnic religions, — 
which have grown up by the gradual accumulation of be- 
liefs and practices in a whole community, innumerable 
individuals bearing a part in their formation; and, on 


MULLER’S CHIPS FROM A GERMAN WORKSHOP. 147 


the other hand, individual religions, products each of 
the deeper insight and uncompromising independence of 
some one person, who breaks the shackles of traditional 
faith and practice, clears away narrow superstitions and 
effete ceremonies, and founds upon a new basis of per- 
ceived truth a new system. Religions of the latter class, 
of course, can arise only in later times, and can succeed 
in establishing themselves only where the forms of the 
old religion have become hollow, and no longer faithfully 
represent the better insight of the times. They, too, are 
alone capable of extension and transfer from one race to 
another, of becoming “ missionary religions ;” for, though 
they have their roots in the whole body of the national 
faith, and for their comprehension need the most careful 
study of the latter, they also in a degree cut loose from it, 
and plant themselves on grounds which men of other 
races can accept and occupy. 

The spirit in which the study of religions is to be pur- 
sued is equally evident from the view we have taken: it 
is the spirit of liberal and tolerant inquiry, of interest, of 
consideration and respect; often, perhaps, of pity and 
sorrow, but without intermixture of holy horror and in- 
dignation at the depth of human depravity displayed. 
If human nature has proved itself, on the whole, so weak 
and short-sighted, so selfish and impure, as to have won 
only faint glimpses of truth, and to have clothed them in 
wild and abhorrent forms, it is very sad; and we ought 
to be the more grateful for the light which we enjoy, and 
by which, in the same weakness of human nature, we 
walk but fitfully and unfaithfully. All the higher and 
better religions of the world confess this weakness, for 
they all claim to found themselves on a revelation: that 
is to say, they imply the impotence of man, without su- 
pernatural aid, to understand whence he comes, how he is 
to live, and what is to be his end. And a hearty charity 
and kindly compassion should be among the most trust- 
worthy and valuable signs of a true illumination. 


148  MULLER’S CHIPS FROM A GERMAN WORKSHOP. 


We may look for valuable results from Professor Miul- 
ler’s lectures in the directing of more enlightened atten- 
tion to the study of religions, and we may expect from 
his wide scholarship and liberality of spirit important ad- 
ditions to our knowledge of religions; but we are hardly 
disposed to recognize him as the founder and promulgator 
of a new science. 


V. 
COX’S ARYAN MYTHOLOGY. 


——-$———= 


In this work Mr. Cox has followed up a beginning 
which he made some years ago (1867) with his little 
** Manual of Mythology.” The latter, in its brevity and 
one-sidedness, hardly merited so large a name; and _ it 
was somewhat overpraised by the adherents of the special 
school to which it belonged, and by those who take their 
cue from them. The present is a much more ambitious 
and elaborate effort ; and it well deserves, as it will doubt- 
less receive, general and careful attention. It is the ex- 
treme working-out, in one direction, of a tendency in 
mythological study which has been for some time growing 
in force, and has quite recently made itself very conspic- 
uous: the tendency, namely, to shift the basis of investi- 
gation of any special mythology within the circle of the 
Indo-European family to the more general ground’of In- 
do-European mythology ; to treat it asa developed branch 
of an older stock, requiring comparison with the other 
branches from the same stock; at once to expand the 
field and to change and deepen the methods of mytho- 
logic research. ‘This tendency began to show itself with 
the first establishment of Indo-European unity, and was 
its necessary result. When once it was impregnably 
demonstrated that a single community had laid the foun- 
dation of Greek, Latin, Celtic, Germanic, Slavic, Iranian, 


1 The Mythology of the Aryan Nations. By George W. Cox, M. A., late 
Scholar of Trinity College, Oxford. In two volumes. London. 8vo. 1870. 


150 | COX’S ARYAN MYTHOLOGY. 


and Indian language, and had developed that language 
to a high degree of structural perfection, under traceable 
conditions of culture which were far in advance of utter 
barbarism, the inference was a natural one that the same 
community must have developed, also, a common relig- 
ion: that is to say, that it must have arrived at certain 
apprehensions of the nature of the powers existing and 
at work in the world outside of man; of their modes of 
action and their connection with man; of man’s relation 
to them, his origin, duties, and destiny; that it must 
have framed some common expression, by word, myth, 
and ceremony, of its religious views; and that, accord- 
ingly, some relics of this primitive faith might be plau- 
sibly looked for among the early beliefs and myths of the 
Indo-European nations ; just as relics of their ancient 
tongue had been discovered, abundant and unmistakable, 
in even their most modern idioms. Of course, only inves- 
tigation could show whether the presumed relics were 
actually to be found; and, if found, of what extent and 
value they would prove to be ; and whether any one peo- 
ple would appear to have saved so much of the faith once 
shared by all that it would offer, as it were, a key to the 
whole. But there were indications lying upon the very 
surface, which awakened. hope of abundant results to re- 
ward the investigator. Thus, to refer to only one or two 
of the most conspicuous, quoted by way of illustration a 
hundred times— the correspondence of deus and Ocos with 
the Sanskrit devas, and of Jupiter and Zev(xarep) with 
the Sanskrit Dyu(pitar), taken in connection with the 
fact that dyu in Sanskrit signified unequivocally the 
bright ‘sky,’ or the shining ‘ day,’ and that deva, its reg- 
ular derivative, meant ‘shining’ or ‘ heavenly,’ was like 
the outcrop of a rich vein, tempting the miner to explore 
its hidden depths. And those who entered upon the in- 
vestigation soon convinced themselves that ancient India 
had preserved the primitive conditions with a faithfulness 


COX’S ARYAN MYTHOLOGY. 151 


which was in vain to be sought elsewhere. On the one 
hand, the Sanskrit language offered in general, as in the 
examples just quoted, the clearest explanation of those 
names to know which is often to know the things them- 
selves; on the other hand, the very earliest recorded pe- 
riod of Indian antiquity, the Vedic, wore an aspect almost 
to be called Indo-European. The former was to be ex- 
pected, considering the recognized exceptional value of 
the Sanskrit as the means of Indo-European etymological 
research ; but the other was in no wise its necessary ac- 
companiment and counterpart; it was rather a special 
and exceptional piece of good fortune for the student. 
Indeed, by the time that Indian history had fairly begun, 
the state of things was entirely changed ; while the clas- 
sical Sanskrit retained most of its Vedic primitiveness, 
the religion which it expressed had gone further from the 
old Indo-European basis than the Greek, for example, 
ever went. It is because hardly even the germs of the 
distinctive institutions of India are to be found in the 
Vedas, that these are so fertile of illustration for the ante- 
historical Indo-European period. 

Every Vedic student, then, became, almost of necessity, 
a student of primitive religions and a comparative mythol- 
ogist. He could not help setting side by side what he 
found in the Veda and the analogous facts from other 
quarters of the world, within or without the Indo-Euro- 
pean domain, and trying to make the one explain the 
other. The general theory of the early stages of relig- 
ious development made rapid advance, and a host of points 
in the special history of Indo-European religions were 
brought clearly to light. Some scholars have been more 
active in this direction than others. Burnouf, Roth, and 
Kuhn were very prominent among the early investigators, 
and of these Kuhn has worked most continuously and 
most deeply. The names of others, whose activity is 
more recent or less effective, we need not stay to men- 
tion. 


152 ) COX’S ARYAN MYTHOLOGY. 


The solidity of the basis which these men have estab- 
lished, and the real value of the results they have built 
upon it, are beyond all reach of denial or cavil. The 
conclusions of the comparative mythologists are, within 
their narrow limits, not less firm than those of the com- 
parative philologists ; and they require to be carefully 
heeded by all who would study any part of Indo-Euro- 
pean antiquity. When sucha new field of pertinent mate- 
rial is thrown open, he is an unfaithful worker who does 
not resort to it. It is no longer possible to undertake the 
interpretation of Greek myths, for example, from Greek 
sources alone, any more than to study Greek derivations 
without regard to the other Indo-European tongues. 
There runs a constant analogy between these two depart- 
ments of inquiry, and we are all the time tempted to draw 
upon the one for the illustration of the other. The root 
of a word is like the natural phenomenon in which a myth | 
or personification takes its origin. If the latter is to be 
fully understood, the former must be traced out, or ap- 
proached as nearly as may be. Either word or myth 
may have become the embodiment of special national life 
and feeling, to any degree: it may be, for example, in- 
stinct with the very spirit of Greek individuality ; it may 
have so racy and local a flavor as to seem to have grown 
up out of the soil of Hellas: and yet it contains an inher- 
itance from an older time, and its present aspect is the 
final result of a history of change and adaptation, which 
has to be read or our comprehension of it is imperfect. 
Behind the splendid pageant of Greek mythology, as be- 
hind the wonderful development of Greek speech, there 
lies a past of a very different character, bare and even 
poor in its simplicity, possessing few attractions, save for 
the historical student, though for him replete with the 
highest interest. And of that past a more faithful picture 
is to be found in India than the most careful and cunning 
search can catch and set forth from the records of the 


COX’S ARYAN MYTHOLOGY. ibs 


hoariest Greek antiquity. The natural conservatism of 
classical scholars long resisted the intrusion of the new 
light from the East in grammar and etymology; but the 
contest is now nearly over; the comparative method, 
through the whole extent of Indo-European speech, is ac- 
knowledged as the only true and fertile one ; and the time 
is doubtless not far distant when the same accordance will 
be reached in the department of mythology and religion. 

But if the main principle of the comparative method is 
thus sound, the details of its application are more intri- 
cate and questionable. When we come to inquire how 
much and what the Vedic hymns teach respecting the 
origin of Greek myths, there is room for all the differ-’ 
ences of individual capacity and tendency to manifest 
themselves. No such bright and convincing light is cast 
that he who runs may read, and that error is impossible. 
The ante-mythical period is more fully illustrated than 
formerly, and the mode in which. myths originate made 
more distinctly apprehensible. Some names are ex- 
plained, and many hints toward direct interpretation are 
given; hardly more. Nothing stands in the way of ex- 
aggeration and abuse on the part of the upholders of the 
new method. Here, again, the parallelism with the study 
of language is close and instructive. When the Sanskrit 
was first brought in to the aid of Indo-European philol- 
ogy, there were not a few who overrated its importance, 
who applied it where it was not pertinent, who set it up 
as supreme where it should have stood second, who, with- 
out profound knowledge or critical method, were ready 
to solve every obscure or doubtful question by reference 
to a Sanskrit dictionary. The influence of such advo- 
cates was, of necessity, hurtful to the cause they espoused, 
strengthening the aversion of all who were inclined to 
shut their eyes to the new light; but for the aid and 
comfort thus given to the enemy, the contest would have 
been sooner and more absolutely settled. In a like man- 


154 COx’S ARYAN MYTHOLOGY. 


ner, the Vedas have been, and will be, handled as a kind 
of spell for clearing up the darkness of Indo-European 
antiquity ; their myths and germs of myths strained far 
beyond what they will bear as means of interpretation, or 
pressed into the service of some favorite theory ; Indian 
material of late growth and doubtful authenticity treated 
as primitive, and what is exclusively Hindu put forward 
as belonging to the whole family. Continued study, the 
consenting labor of many minds, and conscientious criti- 
cism, will by degrees correct these aberrations, and saye 
the true method, with the grand principles it involves, 
even out of the hands of those whose ill-judged advocacy 
does it present harm. 

In the study of which we have thus concisely and im- 
perfectly sketched the basis, the labors of Professor Max 
Miller have made a new era. His article on Compara- 
tive Mythology, in the “ Oxford Essays” for 1856 (re- 
produced in the second volume of his ‘* Chips from a Ger- 
man Workshop ”), made a great sensation among English 
readers on both sides of the Atlantic, being to many the 
revelation of a field of research of which the possibility 
had been before unsuspected. Some of its themes he 
elaborated more fully in the second volume of his * Lect- 
ures on the Science of Language;” and his ‘¢ Chips ” 
contain other essays of kindred character and object. The 
principal significance of his work lies in two directions. 
In the first place, he has set forth, in his peculiarly happy 
style, with attractive eloquence and rich and varied illus- 
tration, the leading principles of the study, drawing to- 
ward them the public attention in a manner and to a 
degree that was within the reach, probably, of no other 
living writer. To regard him, however, as father and 
founder of the science (as many, especially in England, 
seem inclined to do), is an injustice to the great scholars 
who were his predecessors. He cannot fairly be claimed 
even to have deepened and strengthened its basis. It is 


COX’S ARYAN MYTHOLOGY. 155 


precisely in his fundamental views that he is most open 
to adverse criticism, as being at variance with the ap- 
proved tendencies of the science of the day. His as- 
sumption of a special religious faculty in man, a primitive 
intuition of the infinite and divine, an innate craving and 
recognition of a heavenly Father, instead of a capacity to 
see the Creator in the works of creation, a power to feel 
and be impressed by the supernatural, and to rise, by con- 
stant observation, comparison, and inference, higher and 
higher in the apprehension of spiritual truth, is not greatly 
different from the old assumption of a primitive revela- 
tion, with the later religions as its alterations and de- 
basements, which he himself contends against, and would 
fain refute. It inverts the true order of development, 
putting that at the starting-point which ought to be the 
goal. In accordance with this, he looks upon monotheism 
as earlier than polytheism, and even goes so far as to find 
an antecedent and underlying. recognition of one God in 
the simple naturalism of the old Vedic faith —a radical 
perversion, in the opinion of most students of the Veda, 
of its real meaning. Miiller, too, believes in a corruption 
and depravation of earlier and purer doctrines as the or- 
dinary course of development in religion ; but he is origi- 
nal in making the word the instrument of the depravation. 
His peculiar views of the way in which men have blun- 
dered into error on the most vital points of belief, through 
simple forgetfulness of the proper meaning of the terms 
they were using, have been already noticed and com- 
bated, and need not be dwelt upon here. They stand in 
legitimate connection with his theory as to the general 
relation of language to mind and thought. To him, the 
word is not the servant and instrument of the thought, 
but the thought itself; and speech is reason; so that 
errors of speech naturally turn to unreason. No one will 
think of denying that such errors play their part in the 
1 See above, p. 133 seq: 


156 . COX’S ARYAN MYTHOLOGY. 


grand history of the aberrations of the human mind ; but 
that part is far from being the leading one which Miller 
claims. Coming down from religion to mythology, the 
same tendency to exaggeration of the word is seen in his 
theory of ‘mythical phrases,” as the germs of developed 
myths, in which we are convinced that whatever is new 
is ill-founded. ‘So long as a phrase is the real expression 
of a conception of its utterer, so long it has a living force 
within itself, and is capable of growing into something 
else ; but the moment it becomes a phrase merely, it is 
dead, and can only drop into oblivion. 

The other, and the more striking and original part of 
Miiller’s work, lies in his actual contributions to the inter- 
pretation of myths; in the details of his application of 
the principles of comparative mythologic study; in the 
way in which he has turned Vedic elements to account 
for the explanation of points, especially in Greek my- 
thology, hitherto obscure or wrongly treated. He has 
brought forward into the first rank of importance two 
personifications, of the sun and of the dawn, of which 
comparatively little had been made before, and has fur- 
nished a series of certainly very brilliant and attractive 
interpretations. ‘The number of mythical figures under 
which he finds these two natural phenomena, and of 
mythical situations representing their various relations, 
mutual or other, is quite surprising. He is himself star- 
tled at it, and asks whether it can be, after all, that every- 
thing is the dawn or the sun. We may, indeed, question 
a part of his identifications ; we may regard some of his 
combinations as implausible, and criticise here and there 
an etymology as over-venturesome ; we may, in brief; 
think that he has a hobby and rides it too hard; yet we 
cannot refuse him the credit of having thrown open and 
exploited a vein of which his predecessors had failed to 
discover the wealth, and given a new and promising turn 
to the whole subject of mythical interpretation. 


COX’S ARYAN MYTHOLOGY. 157 


A striking feature in this part of Miiller’s work is the 
extent to which he resolves the early mythical history 
and heroic tradition into purely mythical elements. Com- 
mon opinion has heretofore inclined to see in those grand 
figures which loom up on the threshold of a nation’s story 
as it lies in the nation’s mind, veritable men, only magni- 
fied and adorned by the admiration of posterity. Even 
the gods have been taken for deifications. Better and 
deeper knowledge, however, has long been turning the 
minds of students of antiquity in the other direction, and 
showing them that beings of supernatural origin are 
drawn to.earth and made men of, by excess of anthropo- 
morphism, much more often than the contrary. Miller 
has only carried this tendency farther than his predeces- 
sors; startling, for example, the classical scholar by main- 
taining that even the war of Troy is only a form of the 
contest waged in the East to recover the treasures of 
which the powers of darkness have robbed the day in the 
West; that Helen is the dawn, and Achilles a solar fig- 
ure, in whose beauty and prowess, in whose wrath and 
sullen retiracy, in whose triumph and vengeance, in whose 
brief career and early death, are to be seen merely one 
set of variations of the theme which has engaged bard 
and poet since the first dawn of the poetic faculty. 

There were two ways, now, of continuing the work 
thus begun by Miiller. It might be gone over again, in 
a thoroughly independent and critical spirit, by some one 
possessed of learning and acuteness enough to test it in 
all its parts — examining the alleged basis of Indo-Euro- 
pean mythical fancy laid before us in the Veda; weigh- 
ing anew the value of the prominent elements there, and 
tracing out their development by the livelier fancy of the 
Greeks ; striving after such a comprehensive view of both 
as should bring their relations into clearer light ; ques- 
tioning identifications and correcting etymologies. Or, 
on the other hand, its leading ideas and methods might 


158 . CcOx’Ss ARYAN MYTHOLOGY. 


be taken up and pushed on by one whose whole soul was 
possessed by them, with the single design of seeing how 
far they could be carried, and how much could be brought. 
within their reach. 

To return, then, to the work which formed the start- 
ing-point of this exposition (and of which we are more 
solicitous to point out clearly the position and connections 
than to give a detailed and exhaustive criticism) — Mr. - 
Cox, it cannot be questioned, has followed the latter of 
these two ways; or rather, his mind has been taken pos- 
session of by Miiller’s researches, and he cannot help urg- 
ing them forward with all his powers. We do not often 
meet with so implicit a disciple, so enthusiastic a sectary. 
All that Miller has said upon the subject is to him the 
law and the gospel ; each of the master’s opinions is taken 
up and dwelt upon and illustrated and worked out by the 
pupil, with a hearty assent and admiration which are not 
a little interesting to see. Mr. Cox does not feel that 
there can be any real doubt, or need be any serious dis- 
eussion, of the principal points involved in Miller’s theo- 
ries. ‘To him, they are already supported by an array of 
evidence * which will not long hence be regarded as ex- 
cessive ;”” and they need only to be stated and illustrated 
in order to be received by others with the same delighted 
conviction with which his own mind has accepted them. 

Probably there are few who will go this whole length 
with Mr. Cox. Many, rather, will be in some measure 
repelled by the fervor of his advocacy, which will seem 
to them more indicative of obsequiousness of mind than 
of independent critical judgment. We must take his 
work, however, for what it is, and we shall not fail to find 
much ‘to admire in it, and to gain from it valuable light. _ 
There is always something winning in the earnestness of 
full persuasion ; and the assent of many, and the interest 
of more, will be carried onward by the mere force of the 
author’s current. His volumes are doubtless more ‘pict- 


COX’S ARYAN MYTHOLOGY. 159 


uresque, sparkling, and readable than if his nature had 
been cooler and his style more scientific. Mr. Cox’s mind, | 
like his master’s, hardly has the scientific habit; it is 
genial, imaginative, constructive. In his early chapters, 
it is true, he commends and urges the scientific method ; 
but he does not define it, or show us its foundation ; and he 
does not exemplify it, if, besides a faithful resort to every 
available source of evidence, it demands a calm and dis- 
passionate judgment, unbiassed by a favorite theory, and 
a logical and orderly plan, a progress from one estab- 
lished point to another. It were useless to attempt giv- 
ing an analysis of the contents of the book, which is a 
gush of exposition and illustration of one leading idea in 
various forms, and, in part, seems to have been divided 
into chapters by an afterthought. An extract of twenty 
pages almost anywhere would furnish a kind of ideal sec- 
tion of the whole, showing all its different strata of 
thought and argument, and yielding specimens of its sta- 
ple constituents. In a work so written there cannot: but 
be a great deal of repetition; and we imagine that from 
this one a full third might be removed without omitting 
anything. The same myth is explained over and over 
again, with varying fullness ; objections are answered 
half a dozen times; and difficulties already laid to rest 
arise once more to vex our souls and to be exorcised anew. 
A facility of ornate and eloquent expression is the au- 
thor’s most conspicuous quality; and it is less held in 
check and guided: by logical closeness and accuracy than 
were to be desired. He lays no claim to original scholar- 
ship, excepting in the classical department of his subject ; 
and he is neither too careful in the selection of the sources 
on which he relies nor too conscientious in using them. In 
matters of etymology he is least of all trustworthy. Take, 
for example, his statement: (i. 171) that “ Argynnis and 
Phoroneus, Briséis and Achilleus, Paris and Helen, names 
of persons in Hellenic legend, are in the earliest songs of 


160 ) COX’S ARYAN MYTHOLOGY. 


the Aryan family found still in their original application 

_as names of the morning, of the sun, or of darkness.” 
Here are a number of Miiller’s most venturesome conject- 
ures, which he himself puts forth with diffidence, elevated 
into first-rate facts. The first two of the names quoted 
are somewhat doubtfully identifiable with certain com- 
mon adjectives in Sanskrit, which have not in the least 
the character of appellatives, though, as meaning ‘ shin- 
ing’ and the like, variously applicable to the phenomena 
of light. To explain Briséis, we have twice in the Veda 
the word Brsaya, as name of a (male) demon apparently. 
To Achilleus the Veda furnishes no correspondent what- 
ever, and it is only by setting sound etymology at defi- 
ance that it can be brought into even distant connection 
with anything found there. And as for Paris and Helen, 
their oneness with the pani’s and Sarama (the former, in 
the Veda, the thieves of Indra’s kine, the latter his mes- 
senger to reclaim them), is very far from being estab- 
lished; even Miller holds it but doubtfully; and it will 
take, we think, a much stronger internal probability than 
can be made out for the identification to overcome the 
external difficulties, in the forms of the words compared. 
And because ahand occurs once, and once only, in the 
Veda, as an epithet of the dawn — being of wholly doubt- 
ful meaning and derivation, although, but for its lack of 
d, it would be identifiable with dahand, which has a 
derivation, and might well enough also have been applied 
to the dawn, only it unfortunately is not — therefore to 
Mr. Cox (Preface, p. x.), “ the affinity of Athéné with the 
Sanskrit Ahan& and Dahana and the Greek Daphné”’ is 
so clear that Liddell and Scott are to be seriously blamed 
for not admitting it into their Greek lexicon as a satis- 
factory etymology. And if he suggests a new etymology 
of his own, it is some such impossibility as the corre- 
spondence of the Latin Consus and the Sanskrit Ganega 
G. 347, note). | 


COx’S ARYAN MYTHOLOGY. 161 


Nor is Mr. Cox always mindful of consistency in the 
interpretation he gives to mythic elements. The poi- 
soned robe of Dejanira, in which Hercules expires, is 
sometimes (é. g. 1. 56) the mantle of cloud in which the 
sun sinks to rest at the close of day ; at other times (e. g. 
i, 56 again!), it is the representative of “ the piercing 
rays which burn in the tropical noon-day ;”’ and yet again 
(i. 66, note), the boar’s tusk, which cuts short the life of 
Adonis, and “ reappears in the myth of Odysseus, is but 
the thorn of winter and the poisoned robe of Herakles.”’ 
The “thorn of winter,” namely, because the death of 
summer, under the baleful influence of winter, 1s not only 
inseparably connected with the overwhelming of day by 
night, so that either can be substituted for the other to 
help out an interpretation, but — strangely enough — 
the destroying power is most fitly represented by the fatal 
weapon which wounds the hero in his one vulnerable 
spot. It is the arrow that pierces the heel of Achilles ; 
it is the sword which is thrust into Siegfried’s back ; it 
is the spindle that pricks the finger of the maiden shut 
up in the tower; it is the poisoned fragment of finger- 
nail that the malignant dwarfs have left in the crack of 
the door; and various other things. Mr. Cox’s circle of 
comparisons 1s a wide one, and sometimes brings to- 
gether strange bedfellows. Thus (i. 410, note), the gray- 
haired chief in Scott’s ballad of Erlinton, who alone is 
left alive to tell the tale, and the immortal sisters of the 
slain snaky-haired Medusa, and Phrixos, who lives on 
while Hellé dies, and the youngest child of Kronos, who 
‘is not swallowed, and the youngest goat (in Grimm’s 
story of the Wolf and the Seven Little Goats), whom the 
wolf does n’t eat, are all the same thing, and brought in 
in connection with the trials of Cupid and Psyche. And 
(ii. 880, note) the burning up of Blue-Beard in his own 
house, with all his wealth and accomplices, “is mani- 
festly the destruction of Ilion ’’— Blue-Beard, like Paris, 

u 


162 ; COx’S ARYAN MYTHOLOGY. 


being a power of darkness, that steals dawns, or Helens, 
till he meets with one who is too cunning for him, and 
brings about his destruction—a form of the myth, we 
would suggest, that must have grown up near the Are- 
tic: circle, since that is the only quarter of the world 
where the twilight sometimes gets the better of night al- 
together. 
_ This extreme extension of the ground of mythologic 
research and comparison is one of the specialties of Mr. 
Cox’s system; although here, as elsewhere, he is only 
pushing boldly forward where Miller had led the way. 
To him, the Odyssey has but the same story to tell as 
the Iliad; it is the sun, wandering and suffering through 
his ten hours of toil, while the powers of darkness (the 
suitors) worry and distress the bride (the dawn) whom 
he left at evening, and whom he will find again, as young 
and fair as ever, when he returns in early morning. The 
German Mibelungen Lied is palpably the same tale, under 
another aspect.. Arthur and Roland came out of no other 
crucible. And, yet further, the tales and stories with 
which we made acquaintance in childhood are solar and 
dawny in their essential texture: wherever there is an 
irresistible hero doing wonderful deeds, it is the sun; 
where there is a lovely damsel waiting for a deliverer, it 
is the dawn, expectant of the return of the great luminary 
after his day’s toil or his night’s eclipse. But the heroes 
of a humbler class are of the same lineage: Boots, and 
the Shifty Lad, and Jack the Giant-killer, and doubtless 
Tom Thumb, although we do not remember his name in 
the list. Mr. Cox has drawn up (in various places: 
most briefly and comprehensively, perhaps, at i. 48, 44) 
a scheme of the elements which may enter into a solar 
myth, or of the ‘“ mythical phrases” in which the Indo- 
Europeans of the earliest age must have incorporated 
their impressions of ‘the daily or yearly course of the 
lord of day,” and which afterwards, when the proper 


COX’S ARYAN MYTHOLOGY. 163 


sense of the terms used had been forgotten, grew up into 
a wild luxuriance of myth and story. Wherever, now, 
he detects the presence of any of these, there he is ready 
to assume that a solar myth lies hidden. And we have 
seen, by the examples cited, how keen is his sense for 
such prey, and with what slight indications he is satis- 
fied... We should call it easy credulity, if it did not merit 
a better name. He is, in fact, wholly dominated by his 
theory ; he has established in his own mind so immense 
an antecedent probability in favor of this mode of inter- 
pretation of heroic incident, that he is prepared to find 
occasion for it everywhere. ‘The general community of 
scholars, however, we believe, will long continue skep- 
tical, and will only yield its assent, if yield it must, to a 
cooler and more logical advocate. They will not readily 
believe that the ancient Indo-European people treated 
this one theme with such an exuberant fertility of imagi- 
nation as nearly to exhaust themselves upon it, and to 
sing and tell of nothing else. They will not believe that 
elements originally mythical had a power of self-preser- 
vation and propagation so exceptional that even those 
who for thousands of years had entirely lost the underly- 
ing mythical sense could not but reproduce them with 
faithful iteration. The correspondences, in parts, of the 
nursery and narrative literature of many nations of Eu- 
rope and Asia are, indeed, very remarkable ; and it re- 
mains to be determined by comprehensive and wary 
inquiry, how much of them is accidental or due to the 
like working out of tendencies common to all human nat- 
ure, how much is the result of transmission from one 
people to another, and how much, if any, is to be traced 
to a common tradition from the remote ages of unity. 
We cannot consent to have the whole question settled for 
us in advance so summarily. 

Mr. Cox’s method palpably invites to burlesque and 
caricature. We might almost say that he himself sets 


164 | COX’S ARYAN MYTHOLOGY. 


us the example of caricaturing it, so exaggerated is, in — 
many cases, his valuation of the coincidences which he 
thinks to find, so great his ingenuity in discovering them 
where no one else would have suspected their existence. 
An instance is his exposition (i. 151 seg.) of the story of 
Ahmed, as told by Irving in the ‘ Alhambra ;” it is 
much too long to repeat here; but we could hardly ask 
a better model to follow, if we would learn the art of 
interpreting stories into solar myths. And caricatures 
have begun to appear ; hardly any critic of the work has 
been able to refrain from them; the most elaborate and 
artful one we have seen, worked out with immense inge- 
nuity and learning, and with a surprising command of 
countenance, is found in No. 5 of * Kottabos” (an organ 
of the erudition and wit of Trinity College, Dublin), 
where Max Miller himself is proved to be a solar myth, 
and one as compared with which ‘few are so detailed 
and various; and perhaps there is none which brings 
together in so concentrated a focus the special charac- 
teristics of Sanskrit, Hellenic, and Norse fable.’’ We, on 
our part, see capabilities in General Grant, from which 
we refrain our hands only unwillingly. His famous res- 
olution “ to fight it out on this line, ¢f ¢¢ takes all summer,” 
has the true solar ring, announcing a myth of the north- 
ern variety, where the yearly instead of the daily career 
of the orb of day is the theme ; and if we add the long 
winter of inaction and fruitless effort before Richmond, 
and the final resistless outbreak and conquest, as soon as 
the vernal equinox was past, we have a more than usually 
abundant capital of evident solar elements with which to 
begin our interpretation. 

But though we may permit ourselves a laugh at Mr. 
Cox’s exaggerations, we ought to laugh good-humoredly, 
and without refusing him our full respect as an earnest 
scholar and a powerful and ingenious writer. His work 
deserves, as we have said, to be widely studied ; and it 


COX’S ARYAN MYTHOLOGY. 165 


will do valuable service, doubtless, in advancing the cause 
he has at heart, if only by exciting public attention and 
stimulating research and discussion, which shall tend to- 
ward the final establishment of truth. Under and along 
with the exaggerations, we, for our part, are confident 
that there is a great deal which is solid and valuable. 

Only a part of the preparatory work needful to be done 
in order to make the Veda yield its full harvest of re- 
sults for Indo-European antiquity has been yet accom- 
plished. When the internal content of that venerable 
document shall have been as thoroughly laid open as its 
speech has been analyzed, and shall have engaged the la- 
bors of as many careful students, we may hope — not, 
perhaps, for so abundant and certain results as some are 
even now promising themselves, and hastening forward 
to gather; but, at least, for much more than is now 
within our reach, and enough to more than repay all that 
it shall cost. Just at present, tilling should be more the 
occupation of the day than reaping; and we cannot help 
regarding such works as the great St. Petersburg San- 
skrit lexicon (now nearly completed) and Muir’s Original 
Sanskrit Texts (especially the last published volume, 
‘¢ Contributions to a Knowledge of the Cosmogony, My- 
thology, Religious Ideas, Life, and Manners of the Indians 
of the Vedic Age”) as more likely than any others to 
do permanent service to the study of the mythology of 
the Aryan nations. 


VI. 
ALFORD’S QUEEN’S ENGLISH2 


—— f= 


It may seem late to undertake the criticism of a book 
the second edition of which has been already some time 
before the public. But the first edition, which appeared 
a few years since (in 1863), although not passing with- 
out some slight notice in our literary journals, attained 
no American circulation, and made no impression upon 
our community. The enterprise of the publisher has 
succeeded in procuring for the work in its new form so 
wide a currency among us, and in attracting to it so much 
attention, that it becomes worth while seriously to in- 
quire into its merits, and estimate its right to be accepted 
as an authority. ‘This, however, as much for the sake of 
challenging a popularity and consideration which may 
turn out undeserved, as from regard to the good or harm 
which the book is likely to do. For it makes no great 
pretentions to a wide scope, or to philosophic method and 
profundity. It styles itself “Stray Notes on Speaking 
and Spelling,” and is composed of desultory and loosely 
connected remarks on errors and controverted points in 
orthography, orthoépy, and grammar, written in part, as 
its author takes pains to inform us, at chance moments 
of leisure, in cars and eating-houses and other such places. 
Criticism, however, it is plain, should not be disarmed 


1A Plea for the Queen’s English ; Stray Notes on Speaking and Spelling. 
By Henry ALForpD, D. D., Dean of Canterbury. Second Edition. London 
and New York: Alexander Strahan. 1865. 16mo. Pp. xvi., 287. 


ALFORD’S QUEEN’S ENGLISH. 167 


by such acknowledgments, since no man has a right to 
thrust his odd thoughts before us who cannot make them 
fully worth our acceptance. The Stray Notes grew by 
degrees into their present form. They were put together 
first into lectures, and then became a series of articles in 
a weekly newspaper. ‘These attracted much notice, and 
called out abundant correspondence and comment, so that 
the successive papers took on a shape in part controver- 
sial and replicatory. ‘The same was their fate after their 
collection into a volume; and the second edition is not a 
little altered from the first, under the process of criticism 
and reply. They have had, it will be seen, a rather pe- 
euliar history, calculated to provoke our curiosity. The 
author is an English divine, of considerable note as criti- 
cal editor and commentator of the Greek text of the New 
Testament, and also acquired some fame in his earlier 
years as a writer of verses. We should naturally, then, 
explain to ourselves the popularity which the work has 
won by the critical and scholarly ability and the elegant 
style it is found to display. Such qualities, added to the 
general and attractive interest of the subject, ought to be 
enough to insure a notable career to even a heavier vol- 
ume. 

It is unfortunate, however, for the American student 
who may be desirous to draw from this source valuable 
instruction as to the best usage of his mother-tongue, that 
he finds himself repelled, almost at the start, by a violent 
ebullition of spite against his native country. The rever- 
end author, namely, is engaged in magnifying his office as 
polisher of the habits of speech of English speakers, by 
showing the exceeding and deep-reaching importance of 
attention to niceties of diction ; and he holds up Ameri- 
cans to reprobation for “the character and history of the 
nation, its blunted sense of moral obligation and duty to 
man, its open disregard of conventional right where ag- 
grandizement is to be obtained, and, I may now say, its 


168 : ALFORD’S QUEEN’S ENGLISH. 


reckless and fruitless maintenance of the most cruel and 
unprincipled war in the history of the world” (p. 6). 
This, it is true, was written before Lee’s surrender. 
Since the end of 1864 we have changed all that; and, in 
our zeal after self-improvement, we can well afford to 
pardon a few hard words to a ‘ dignitary of the Church 
of England” who has given his ardent sympathies to the 
cause of Secession and Slavery, provided only he shall 
make good his claim to be our instructor in his proper de- 
partment. Still, we cannot but form the suspicion that 
our author is somewhat under the dominion of class and 
national prejudices, and either careless of seeking infor- 
mation as to subjects upon which he is very ready to offer 
his opinion, or not acute in judging and profiting by in- 
formation obtained. And further, it cannot but seriously 
shake our confidence in his philological acumen to find 
that our dreadful example is intended to “‘ serve to show ” 
the horrified British nation “ that language is no trifle!” 
Our astonished inquiries into the connection of such a 
warning with such a lesson bring us to see that the Dean 
attributes our viciousness to the infelicities of our speech, 
since “‘ every important feature in a people’s language is 
reflected in its character and history.” We had always 
thought, it must be owned, that the “ reflection ” was in 
the opposite direction — that character and history deter- 
mined language. It is perhaps allowable to say, by a 
kind of figure, that a man’s image in the glass is reflected 
in his person ; and it is certain that, if we can make the 
image transcendently lovely, the man himself will be sure 
to turn out as handsome; only we cannot well reach the 
image save through the man himself. In like manner, if 
we can train the masses of a people to speak elegantly, 
doubtless we shall change their character vastly for the 
better ; but the improvement will be only in a very sub- 
ordinate degree due to the reflex action of language ; it 
will rather be the direct effect of the process of educa- 
tion. 


ALFORD’S QUEEN’S ENGLISH. 169 


Our suspicions of the soundness of our philological au- 
thority, thus aroused, are not precisely lulled to sleep by 
an examination of the other incentives he offers to exact- 
ness of speech. We are pointed to the example of the 
Apostle Peter, when he was accused by the bystanders 
of being a Galilean, on the ground of his Galilean dialect. 
“So that,” says our author, “the fact of a provincial 
pronunciation was made use of to bring about the repent- 
ance of an erring Apostle.” It is not easy to see the 
point of the argument here made. One might rather be 
tempted to infer that a provincial pronunciation is a 
good thing, and deserves encouragement, if it could be- 
come the means of so important a conversion ; who knows 
but that our own local idioms, carefully nursed and duly 
displayed, may somehow be made to work out our salva- 
tion? But there is a worse difficulty behind ; and really, 
if Mr. Alford were not a Dean, and an editor of the New 
Testament text, we should be inclined to accuse him of 
neglecting his Bible. According to the received reading 
of the Evangelists (we have not examined Dean Alford’s 
edition), the charge brought against the saint that he did 
not talk good Jerusalem Chaldee had for its sole effect to 
draw from him a repetition of his former lying denial, 
along with a volley of oaths and curses (luckless Peter! 
he forgot that his native dialect would only show more 
distinctly in such an outbreak of passion) ; and it was 
the crowing of the cock that brought about his repent- 
ance. So that, after all, the lesson we are to learn 
must be that, if we will only repress our local peculiari- 
ties of speech, we’shall be less exposed to being detected 
- In our wickedness ; or else, that we must beware of accus- 
ing any one of dialectic inaccuracies, lest thereby we 
drive him to greater enormity of sin. Our author has 
perverted, yet without appreciable gain, a text which 
would not bend to his purpose in its true form. 

We are now tempted to examine the other case cited 


170 : ALFORD’S QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 


by the Dean in this department, and see whether it will 
not, perhaps, give us a higher idea of his qualifications 
as a critic of language. He speaks (p. T, seg.) of the 
_ spurious poems of Rowley as having been in part de- 
tected by their containing the word zs —a word which 
was not in good use in Rowley’s time. So far all is well. 
But then he goes on to discourse concerning the infre- 
quency of iés in early English, and the employment of 
his for it, evidently in total ignorance of the reason: 
namely, that Azs was in Anglo-Saxon, and hence also for 
a long time in English, the regular genitive case of it (A. 
S. Ait), not less than of he; and that the introduction of 
ats was a popular inaccuracy, a grammatical blunder, such 
as the introduction of she’s for her would be now. ‘To 
the general apprehension, Ais stood in the usual relation 
of a possessive case, formed by an added ’s, to he, and 
had nothing to do with i¢; and so popular use manufact- 
ured a new “ regular” possessive for 2¢, which was finally, 
after a protracted struggle, received into cultivated and 
literary styles, and made good English. Hear, on the 
other hand, our author’s explanation of the rarity of 
its during the period from Shakespeare to Milton: ‘¢ The 
reason, I suppose, being, that possession, indicated by 
the possessive case its, seemed to imply a certain life or 
personality, which things neuter could hardly be thought 
of as having.” A more fantastic and baseless suggestion 
is rarely made; it is so empty of meaning that we can 
hardly forbear to call it silly. There was not at that pe- 
riod a neuter noun in the language that did not form a 
possessive in ’s with perfect freedom. Who can fancy 
Shakespeare doubting whether a table really had or pos- 
sessed legs, as well as a horse ora man; or as being will- 
ing to say “a table’s legs,”’ but questioning the propriety 
of ‘¢a table on zts legs”? ? Or how were the Bible trans- 
lators avoiding the ascription of possession to things in- 
animate by talking of “ the candlestick, his shaft and his 


ALFORD’S QUEEN’S ENGLISH. 171 


branch,” and so forth, instead of ‘its shaft and its 
branch ” ? 

If these, then, are fair specimens of our author’s learn- 

ing and method, we must expect to find his book charac- 
terized by ignorance of the history of English speech, 
inaccuracy, loose and unsound reasoning, and weakness 
of linguistic insight. And we are constrained to acknowl- 
edge that such expectations will be abundantly realized 
in the course of a further perusal of the work. Let us cite 
a few more specimens. 
_ Perhaps the most striking example we can select of: the 
Dean’s want of knowledge on philological subjects is his 
treatment of the word neighbor. ‘* This,” he says (p. 
12), ‘has come from the German nachbar ”’! but he adds 
in a foot-note that the derivation has been questioned ; 
that a Danish correspondent thinks it should be referred 
to the Danish or Norse nabo ; and he has himself chanced 
to observe “ that the dictionaries derive it from the An- 
glo-Saxon nehyebur.” He does not venture to judge a 
matter of such intricacy and difficulty, and simply leaves 
in the text his original etymology from the German. 
This is very much as if we were to be in doubt whether 
to trace a friend’s descent from his grandfather, or from 
one or other of his second-cousins, finally inclining to a 
certain cousin, because with him we ourselves happened 
to be somewhat acquainted. Certainly, one who can dis- 
play such ignorance of the first principles of English ety- 
mology ought to be condemned to hold his peace forever 
on all questions concerning the English language. 

The case is the same wherever a knowledge of the his- 
tory of English words ought to be made of avail in dis- 
cussing and deciding points of varying usage. ‘Thus, when 
inquiring (p. 46. seg.) whether we ought to say a histo- 
rian or an historian, and instancing the Bible use of an 
before initial f in almost all cases, he omits to point out 
that an is the original form, once used before both conso- 


Lae ALFORD’S QUEEN’S ENGLISH. 


nants and vowels, and that, when it came by degrees to 
be dropped before consonants, for the sake of a more rapid 
and easy utterance, it maintained itself longest before the 
somewhat equivocal aspiration, h. He is right, we think, 
in not regarding the rule for using an before the initial A 
of an unaccented syllable as a peremptory one. The bet- 
ter reason is on the side of the more popular colloquial 
usage ; if the A of historian, like that of history, is to be 
really pronounced, made audible, a ought properly to 
stand before it,as before the other. But no Biblical sup- 
port can make of such a combination as an hero aught 
but the indefensible revival of an antique and discarded 
way of speaking. } 

So also, Dean Alford (p. 48) fails to see and to point 
out that, in the antiquated phrase such an one, we have a 
legacy from the time when one had not yet acquired its 
~ anomalous pronunciation win, but was sounded dne (as it 
still is in its compounds dnly, aldne, atdne, etc.). As we 
now utter the word, such an one is not less absurd and 
worthy of summary rejection from usage than would be 
such an wonder. } 

The discussion, again, of ‘“ better than J” or * better 
than me” is carried on (p. 152 seq.) without an allusion 
to the fact that than is historically an adverb only, the 
same word with then, and has no hereditary right to 
govern an accusative, as if it were a preposition. ‘ He 
is better than I ” is, by origin, “‘ he is better, then I” — 
that is to say, ‘‘ I next after him.” Linguistic usage has, 
indeed, a perfect right to turn the adverbial construction 
into a prepositional ; but, as the former is still in almost 
every case not only admissible, but more usual, the ten- 
dency to convert the word into a preposition is not one 
to be encouraged, but rather, and decidedly, the con- 
trary. 

It might be deemed unfair to blame our author for his 
equally faulty discussion of the question between the two 


ALFORD’S QUEEN’S ENGLISH. ny: 


forms of locution, “it is J” and “it is me,” because his 
correspondents and the correspondents of some of the 
English literary journals (which have been the arena of 
a controversy upon the subject much more ardent than 
able, within no long time past) are just as far as he is 
from doing themselves credit in connection with it. 
What he cites from Latham and (in a note) from Ellis is 
of very little account. It may well enough be that “ it is 
me”? is now already so firmly established in colloquial 
usage, and even in written, that the attempt to oust it 
will be vain; but the expression is none the less in its 
origin a simple blunder, a popular inaccuracy. It is 
neither to be justified nor palliated by theoretical consid- 
erations —as by alleging a special predicative construc- 
tion, or citing French and Danish parallels. There was 
a time when to say “ us did it” for ‘* we did it,” * them 
did it” for ‘* they did it,” was just as correct as to say 
“you did it” for *“* ye did it;” but usage, to which we 
must all bow as the only and indisputable authority in 
language, has ratified the last corruption and made it good 
English, while rejecting the other two. He would bea 
pedant who should insist in these days that we ought to say 
ye instead of you in the nominative ; but he would also have 
been worthy of ridicule who, while the change was in 
progress, should have supported it on the ground of a ten- 
dency to the subjective use of the accusative, and cited in 
its favor the example of the Italian loro, ‘ them,’ for elleno, 
‘they,’ as plural of respectful address. And so long as it 
is still vulgar to say “it is him, it is her, it is us, it is 
them,” and still proper and usual to say “it is J,” our 
duty as favorers of good English requires us to oppose 
and discountenance ‘it is me,” with the rest of its tribe, 
as all unlike regretable and avoidable solecisms. 

Of course the Dean puts his veto (p. 253) upon reli- 
able ; men of his stamp always do. He alleges the staple 
argument of his class, that rely-upon-able would be the 


174 3 ALFORD’S QUEEN'S: ENGLISH. 


only legitimate form of such a derivative from rely. 
They ought fairly to put the case somewhat thus: “ It 
is unaccount-for-able, not to say laugh-at-able, that men 
will try to force upon the language a word so take-objec- 
tion-to-able, so little avail-of-able, and so far from indis- 
pense-with-able, as reliable ;’’ then we should see more 
clearly how much the plea is worth. 

Of course, again, our author sets his face like flint 
against writing or instead of owr at the end of such words 
as honor and favor ; and that, upon the high and com- 
manding consideration that to simplify the termination 
thus “is part of a movement to reduce our spelling 
to uniform rule as. opposed to usage” (p. 10); that it 
‘is an approach to that wretched attempt to destroy all 
the historic interest of our language, which is known by 
the name of phonetic spelling’ (p. 14) —and upon the 
phonetic movement he proceeds to pour out the vials 
of his ponderous wit and feeble denunciation. On the 
whole, we think the phonetists are to be congratulated on 
having the Dean for an adversary ; his hostility is more 
a credit to them than would be his support. There are 
a host of difficulties in the way of the phonetic spellers 
which they themselves, or many of them, are far from 
appreciating ; but they are not of the kind which Mr. Al- 
ford seeks to raise. No one wants to set up rule against 
usage, but only to change usage from a bad rule to a 
good one. And our language has a store of historie in- 
terest which would not be perceptibly trenched upon, 
even if we were to take the extraordinary liberty of 
writing our words just as we speak them. Our present 
spelling is of the nature of a great and long-established 
institution, so intimately bound up with the habits and 
associations of the community that it is well-nigh or quite 
impregnable. But a philologist. ought to be ashamed to 
defend it on principle, on theoretical grounds. He, at 
any rate, ought to know that a mode of writing is no 


ALFORD'S QUEEN’S ENGLISH. 175 


proper repository for interesting historical reminiscences ; 
that an alphabetic system has for its office simply and 
solely to represent: faithfully a spoken language, and is 
perfect in proportion as it fulfills that office, without at- 
tempting to do also the duty of Egyptian hieroglyphs 
and Chinese ideographs. No other so great linguistic 
blessing could be conferred upon the English language 
and the people who beep it as a consistent phonetic 
orthography.! 

It is calculated profoundly to state our faith in Dean 
Alford’s capacity as an interpreter and expositor of diffi- 
cult texts to find him guilty of explaining (p. 105) the 
reflexive verb to endeavor one’s self by ‘ to consider one’s 
self in duty bound,’ and of:asserting that this ‘ appears 
clearly ” from the answer made ‘by the candidate for or- 
dination to the bishop’s exhortation to diligence in prayer 
and other holy exercises, “‘ I will endeavor myself so to 
do, the Lord being my helper.” Not only does this an- 
swer exact no such interpretation of the phrase as the 
one given by the Dean, but it even directly and obviously 
suggests the true meaning, ‘ to exert one’s self, to do one’s 
endeavor.’ 

A similar paucity of insight is exhibited in our au- 
thor’s theory (p. 86), that the origin of the double com- 
parative lesser, for less,is to be traced to the “ attrac- 
tion”’ of the dissyllabic word greater, with which it is not 
infrequently found connected in use. No such effect of 
attraction as this, we are sure, can be found in any part 
of our English speech. The true reason of the form is 
not hard to discover: it lies in the extension of a prevail- 
ing analogy to one or two exceptional cases. ess and 
worse are the only comparatives in our language which 
do not end in 7; and er is accordingly so distinctly pres- 
ent to the apprehension of the language-users as sign of 
comparative meaning that they have gone on, naturally 


1 This subject is more fully discussed in the next article. 


176 | ALFORD’S QUEEN’S ENGLISH. 


enough, to apply it to these two also, thus assimilating 
them to the rest of their class. The only difference in 
the result is, that Zesser has been fully adopted, in certain 
connections, into good usage, while worser is still almost 
a vulgarism, though employed now and then by writers 
of undoubted authority. 

Nor can we ascribe any greater merit to the Dean’s 
_ treatment of the preposition on to or onto, used to denote 
motion, as distinguished from locality or place, denoted 
by the simple preposition on: thus, “‘ The cat jumped on 
to the table, and danced about on the table.” Such a dis- 
tinction, as every one knows, is often made in colloquial 
style, but is not yet, and perhaps may never be, admitted 
in good writing; this tolerates only on. Our author is 
not content with denying that on to is now good writable 
English; he tries to make out that there is no reason or 
propriety in attempting to express any such difference of 
relation as is signified by the two separate forms. His 
argument is this: if we say ‘* The cat jumped on the 
table,” or if the tired school-boy, begging a lift on his 
way, gets from the coachman the permission, ‘“ All right, 
jump on the box,” will there be any danger of a failure 
to understand what is meant? Of course not, we reply ; 
but neither should we. fail to understand “The dog 
jumped in the water, and brought out the stick;” nor 
would Tom be slow in taking, and acting on, coachee’s 
meaning, if the reply were “‘Jump in the carriage.” 
The question is not one of mere intelligibility, but of the 
desirableness of giving formal expression to a real differ- 
ence of relation —as we have actually done in the case 
of in and into. On to, says our author (p. 181), is not so 
good English as into, ‘* because on is ordinarily a prep- 
osition of motion as well as of rest, whereas 2m is almost 
entirely a preposition of rest.” This is an amusingly 
absurd inversion of the real relations of the case: in fact, 
wm is a preposition of rest only, because we have znto in 


ALFORD'’S QUEEN’S ENGLISH. 177 


good usage as corresponding preposition of motion; on 
is obliged to be both, because onto has not won its way to 
general acceptance. The double form would be just as 
proper and just as expressive in the one case as in the 
other, and there is no good reason why we should not 
heartily wish that onto were as unexceptionable English 
as into, whether we believe or not that it will ever become 
so, and whether or not we are disposed to take the respon- 
sibility of joining to make it so. Every German scholar 
knows how nice and full of meaning are the distinctions 
made in the German language, as regards these two and 
a few other prepositions, by the use after them of a da- 
tive to denote locality and an accusative to denote motion. 
The Anglo-Saxon was able to accomplish the same object 
by the same means; but we have, in losing our dative 
case, lost the power to do so, and have only partially 
made up the loss, by coining, during the modern period, 
such secondary words as into and onto, that they may bear 
a part of the office of in and on. 

We will barely allude to one or two more instances of 
a like character: such are our author’s conjecture (p. 52) 
that our separation of mdnifold in pronunciation from 
many is due to the influence of its felt analogy with mdni- 
fest ; his attempt (p. 91) to find an etymological reason 
for the translation ‘* Our Father which art in heaven,” 
instead of ‘‘ who art;”’ his theory (p. 42) that the con- 
junction of the two words “ humble and hearty ” in the 
Prayer-Book is good ground for holding that the first as 
well as the second was pronounced with an aspirated h ; 
his apparent assumption (p. 25) that the’s of senator’s 
represents the Latin zs of senatorts (or 1s it only his con-_ 
fused expression that is to blame here ?) —and so forth. 

These are but the more prominent and striking illus- 
trations of Dean Alford’s general method. We may say 
without exaggeration that — especially in the first half of 


the book, where questions are more often dealt with that 
12 


178 . ALFORD’S QUEEN’S ENGLISH. 


involve historical considerations and call for some scholar- 
ship — there is hardly a single topic brought under dis- 
cussion which is treated in a thorough and satisfactory 
manner, in creditable style and spirit: even where we are 
agreed with our author’s conclusions, he repels us by a 
superficial, or incomplete, or prejudiced, or blundering 
statement of the reasons that should guide us to them. 
It is almost an impertinence in one so little versed in 
English studies to attempt to teach his countrymen how 
they ought to speak, and why. 

The last half of the work deals prevailingly with syn- 
tactical points, requiring to be argued rather upon rhetor- 
ical than grammatical grounds. But, though in a meas- 
ure exempt from the class of criticisms which we have 
found occasion to make above, it is not without its own 
faults. The Dean’s chief hobby throughout is the de- 
preciation of ‘ laws,’’ whether of the rhetorician or of 
the grammarian, and the exaltation of “ usage”? as op- 
posed to them. He has, of course, a certain right on his 
side, yet not precisely as he understands it. The laws he 
rejects are only meant to stand as expressions of good 
usage ; nor do those who set them up arrogate to them 
peremptory and universal force, but rather a value as 
guiding principles, attention to which will save from 
many faults the less wary and:skillful. No one holds that 
he who has not native capacity and educated taste can be- 
come by their aid an elegant writer; no one denies that 
he who has capacity ee taste may cast them to the 
winds, sure that his own sense of what is right will lead 
him to clear and forcible expression. But we have all 
heard of a class of people who inveigh against ‘ laws,” 
and would fain escape judgment by them ; and the very 
vigor of the Dean’s recalcitrations inspires us with suspi- 
cions that there may be good cause for his uneasiness. 
And so it is; he has not inany eminent degree that fine — 
sense which enables one to write without rule a pure and 


ALFORD’S QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 179 


flowing English. His style is always heavy and ungrace- 
ful, and often marked with infelicities and even inaccura- 
cies. As many of our readers are aware, he has received 
on this score a severe scathing from Mr. Moon, in a little 
work happily entitled “The Dean’s English,” by way of 
answer to ** The Queen’s English.”” To this we refer any 
one who may be curious to see the other side of his claim 
to set himself up as a critic of good English properly ex- 
posed. The professed general views he puts forth are in 
no small part special pleadings, rather, against the criti- 
-eisms of his censors. He appears to suppose that any 
somewhat inaccurate or slovenly phrase or construction of 
his for which he can find parallels in our Bible transla- 
- tion and in Shakespeare is thereby hallowed and made 
secure against attack — unmindful that our style of ex- 
pression has in many points tended toward precision and 
nicety during the last centuries, so that not everything 
which was allowed in Shakespeare’s time will be tolerated 
now ; and further, and more especially, that great writers 
may be pardoned in taking now and then liberties which, 
if ventured on by little men, like him and ourselves, will 
be justly visited with reprobation. 

It is our opinion, therefore, upon the whole, that the 
English-speaking public would have lost little had our 
author’s lucubrations been confined to the “ Church of 
England Young Men’s Literary Association,” for which 
they were originally intended, and which doubtless re- 
ceived them with unquestioning faith, and had he never 
brought them out where Dissenters and other irrey- 
erent outsiders should carp at them. ‘The circulation 
and credit they have won in this country are mainly a re- 
flection of the unusual attention which has been paid them 
in England ; and the latter is partly fortuitous, the result 
of a combination of favoring circumstances, partly due to 
the general interest felt in the subject of the work, and 
curiosity to hear what a man of high position and re- 


180 , ALFORD’S QUEEN'S ENGLISH. 


pute for scholarship has to say upon it; and in part it is 
an indication of the general low state of philological cult- 
ure in the British Isles. We cannot wish “ The Queen’s 
English” a continued currency, unless it be understood 
and received by all for just what it is— a simple expres- 
sion of the views and prejudices of a single educated 
Englishman respecting matters of language; having, 
doubtless, a certain interest and value as such, but pos- 
- sessing no more authority than would belong to a like ex- 
pression on the part of any one among thousands of its 
readers. Its true character is that of a sample of private 
opinion, not a guide and model of general usage. 


NY 
HOW SHALL WE SPELL? 


——~~— 


How our English words shall be spelt is a matter con- 
cerning which the great mass of those to whom the lan- 
guage is native appear to have pretty fully made up their 
minds. ‘They intend to tolerate no change in the present 
orthography. ‘Those who put forth proposals for its al- 
teration, whether in certain words and classes of words 
only, or upon a wider scale, are set down and laughed at 
without mercy. The public sentiment is perhaps stronger 
and more unanimous upon the subject than ever before. 
There was a time when the movement toward a consist- 
ent spelling, of which the Fonetik Nuz was a conspicuous 
exponent, wore in the eyes of many persons a threaten- 
ing aspect ; but it now seems dangerous to nobody. Re- 
action, even, is the order of the day. The orthograph- 
ical ‘“‘ improvements’ made by that unscrupulous radical, 
Noah Webster, have been one by one abandoned and 
ignored by his editors. The writing of honor for honour, 
and the like, was once pretty well established throughout 
America, and making progress in England itself; at pres- 
ent it is quite crushed out in the latter country, and 
many American scholars and publishers are giving it up, 
in shame and confusion of face. And yet there are, from 
time to time, voices raised also upon the other side of the 
question; even efforts seriously made —doubtless with 
some hope of a successful issue—to bring about that 
sweeping revolution which we, the English-speakers at 


182 , HOW SHALL WE SPELL ? 


large, are determined neither to encourage nor to allow. 
To mention only one or two of those which have last 
come under our notice: a company has been formed at 
Mendota, in Illinois, ‘* with a capital of $35,000,” for car- 
rying through the great national reform in spelling, and 
introducing a new and strictly phonetic alphabet; the 
American Philological Society! Cin and of New York) 
has put forth, as a feeler of the public pulse, if not as the 
direct suggestion of reform, a phonetic allegory on the 
late war and its causes, the “ History of Magnus Ma- 
harba”’ (Abraham) ; and a senator of the United States 
has moved to devote a part of the superfluous public 
funds to paying a mixed commission, which shall devise 
and report a plan for a consistent orthography. The 
subject, then, is still in some degree an open one before 
the public mind. Or, if we are to regard the influence 
of these few unquiet spirits as too insignificant to be 
made much account of, we may at any rate take a satis- 
faction in reviewing the position we hold against them, 
and realizing anew its strength and security. 

No one, we presume, will be found to question that 
one very important reason why we cleave to our present 
modes of spelling is the simple fact that they are ours. 
We have learned them, by dint of diligent study, if not 
of painful effort; we are used to them; our spoken words 
in any other garb would look to us strange and quaint, 
or even ridiculous. To give them up would imply a rey- 
olution — such an overthrow of a grand institution, firmly 
rooted in the usages and predilections of a wide com- 
munity, as no race or generation has ever yet been will- 
ing to permit, save under the pressure of some great and 
profoundly felt necessity. And we acknowledge no such 
necessity ; far from this, we think we see a variety of 
reasons why our favorite institution is preferable to any 


1 A private organization, not to be confounded with the American Philologi- 
cal Association. 


HOW SHALL WE SPELL ? 183 


that could be put in its place. Precisely here, however, 
we ought to feel most distrustful of the ground we stand 
upon. It is so easy to overvalue, or even wholly to mis- 
interpret, reasons apparently favoring conclusions which 
we are already determined to reach! Let us, then, enter 
into a summary examination of the alleged advantages 
of our present English orthography, for the purpose of 
determining both what is their actual worth, and how 
far we rely upon them in our defense of the institution. 
First to be noticed among the advantages referred to is 
the convenient discrimination to the eye of homonyms, 
or words which are pronounced alike, but have a different 
origin and meaning. A familiar example is afforded us 
in the written distinction of meet, meat, and mete; and 
another that of to, too, and two; such triplets, as every 
one knows, are not very rare in our language, and couples 
of the same sort are to be counted by scores. Now, we 
have to observe that any credit which is given to our 
written language in this particular must be taken away 
from our spoken language. We gain nothing by writing 
the uttered syllables meet and too in a variety of ways, 
unless, when uttered, they are of ambiguous meaning. If 
our minds are for even the briefest moment puzzled by 
such expressions as ‘“‘he goes to Boston,” ‘he goes two 
miles,” ‘“*he goes too far,” not knowing which too is 
meant in either case, then it is worth while to avoid a 
like difficulty in our reading by spelling the word differ- 
ently. But who will consent to make so damaging an 
admission? There is a language in the world, the Chi- 
nese, where the words are so few, and their meanings so 
many, that orthographic differences are brought in as an 
important aid to comprehension, and the writing follows, 
upon a grand scale, not the utterance alone, but the sig- 
nification also. Thus, there are more than eleven hun- 
dred ways of writing the word é, and other words count 
their representatives by hundreds, by scores, or by tens. 


ow 


184 , HOW SHALL WE SPELL ? 


A host of devices have to be resorted to there in spoken 
speech to get rid of ambiguities which are wholly avoided 
in written. Our English, however, is not afflicted with 
such poverty of expression as to be brought to this strait. 
We have also three different founds — found from find, 
found meaning ‘establish,’ and found meaning ‘ cast, 
mould’ — between which, we venture to say, no soul 
ever thought of making a confusion, though they are all 
spelt with the same letters. Is there any one who cannot 
tell, by the ear or by the eye, when cleave means ‘stick 
together,’ and when it means ‘ part asunder ?’ Who ever 
finds any more difficulty in separating bear, ‘ bruin,’ from 
bear, ‘ carry,’ than in separating either of these from bare, 
‘naked’? Of how infinitesimal value, then, is the Chi- 
nese principle, as introduced into English usage! We 
may blot out every vestige of it from our vocabulary to- 
morrow, and it will never be missed; the written lan- 
guage will still continue to be:as good as the spoken ; 
and if any one is not content with that, let him migrate 
and learn another tongue. [If the principle is to be kept 
and made much of, let us agree to give it a more consist- 
ent application: let us not spell alike words so different 
in history and use as the three fownds ; when the same 
vocable diverges into meanings widely dissimilar, let us 
vary its spelling a little to match, not writing in the same 
way ‘she became ill” and *‘her dress became her,” nor 
letting the lawyer and the lover go to court in the same 
orthographic fashion — yet more, when there has been a 
divergence of pronunciation as well, as when a mntite 
portion of time has become a minute. Let us separate 
he réad from he réads, as we have separated he léd from 
he léads ; above all, let us not confound together in spell- 
ing words distinct in every respect — derivation, sense, 
and utterance — like the verb /éad and the metal léad. 
Consistency, however, of any kind in English spelling 
we have taught ourselves to regard as of little or no con- 


HOW SHALL WE SPELL? 185 


Sequence; its value is quite overborne and thrown into 
the shade for us by that of the “ historic ” principle. If 
there is any one thing more than another that makes us 
content with, even proud of, our orthography, it is the 
fact that it is “historic.” But wherein, again, lies the 
worth of the historic principle? Why, in its interesting 
suggestiveness, of course ; in its exceeding importance to 
etymology. Very extreme claims have been made in its 
behalf in this latter respect by the enemies of the Fonetik 
Nuz party. Thus, an English Quarterly reviewer, taking 
- Max Miller to task for the few words in favor of the in- 
herent: desirableness of a phonetic mode of spelling boldly 
spoken by him in the last series of his lectures on lan- 
guage, asks ‘who would have either time or energy 
enough to master the history of this single language”? if 
we strike out the traces of the origin of its words still 
preserved in their spelling ? and he adds that the intro- 
duction of a phonetic system “in the second generation 
would break the backs of philological students, and in the 
third render their existence impossible ” (the latter catas- 
trophe, as we may remark, being a very natural conse- 
quence of the former). And a very recent American 
writer on the English language echoes these sentiments, 
maintaining that, ‘if the form were to follow the sound, 
there would soon not a single trace be left of the language 
used by our forefathers ;” and that, “if the Monetik Nuz 
had been started a thousand years ago, it is safe to assert 
that nobody would have had either the courage or the 
time to attempt mastering the history of our language.” 
Now, we doubt not that these gentlemen conceived them- 
selves to be making a stout fight in defense of the guild 
of etymologists, threatened with the cutting off of one of 
its chief sources of gain, and to be winning a title to its 
collective and profound gratitude. But save us from such 
champions! They may be allowed to speak for them- 
selves, since they know best their own infirmity of back 


186 . HOW SHALL WE SPELL ? 


and need of braces; the rest of the guild, however, will 
thank them for nothing. If the English were like the 
Tibetan, for example, a dialect of unknown history and 
of exceedingly obscure character and relations, the philol- 
ogists who first came upon it would naturally be delighted 
to find its words, like the Tibetan, crowded full of silent 
consonants and built about mispronounced vowels — all 
relics, or at least presumed ones, of former modes of ut- 
‘terance. But the two cases are not, in fact, altogether par- 
allel. Of the English we have abundant monuments 
coming from nearly every century since before the time 
of Alfred, or say for eleven or twelve hundred years ; 
and the chief fault which we have to find with them as illus- 
trations of the history of the language is that they are so 
little regardful of the phonetic principle. ‘The confused 
orthography of the Anglo-Saxon itself is an obstacle in 
the way of our fully understanding its orthoépic aspect, 
and the difficulty grows constantly worse from that time 
to the present. Painful researches into the history of 
the changes in English pronunciation are now in prog- 
ress which would be rendered unnecessary if the written 
literature of each period had represented in an orderly 
and consistent manner its own modes of utterance. There 
is in existence a manuscript poem, the “ Ormulum,” of 
the “‘Semi-Saxon”’ period of our literature (A. D. 1150- 
1250), apparently in the author’s own hand, no one else 
having ever thought well enough of it to copy it; and a 
tedious work it is, indeed; but for us it has a high and 
peculiar value, just for the reason that its author was a 
phonetic fanatic, and wrote it out in a consistent mode of 
spelling of his own devising, one that throws a deal 
of light upon the condition of the spoken language of his 
time. While we have the sources of our English fully 
within our reach in the Anglo-Saxon and Old French lit- 
eratures, it is the height of unreason to assert that our 
reading of English etymologies is in any manner de- 
pendent upon the current “ historic ” orthography. 


HOW SHALL WE SPELL? 187 


But further, were this dependence as great as is claimed, 
we are still puzzled to see how it should have any bearing 
upon the present practical question of a reform in spelling. 
Should even the Tibetan people desire to carry through 
such a reform —to write, for example, dag instead of 
bsgrags, mre instead of smras—the philologist would 
rather admire their good sense than quarrel with its re- 
sults ; having once obtained a record of the old written 
form, he is indifferent as to whether it be or be not longer 
kept up in popular usage. Do the writers whom we have 
quoted above imagine that, the moment we adopt a new 
mode of spelling, all the literature written in the old is to 
pass in a twinkling out of existence and out of memory ? 
Certainly there are agencies which might be made use of 
to avert so bewildering a catastrophe. A Society for the 
Preservation of English Etymologies might perhaps be or- 
ganized, which should make a provident selection of old- 
style dictionaries and grammars, and store them away in 
a triply fire-proof library, for the young philologists of 
future times to be nursed upon until they could bear 
stronger food. It might even be found practicable, by 
ingenious and careful management, to procure the con- 
struction of a dictionary of the new-fangled idiom in 
which the former spelling of every word should be set 
alongside its modern substitute, in order to render possible 
the historic comprehension of the latter. Thus, to take 
an extreme caseor two, the new word sam (a as in far), 
by having the explanation ‘“anciently, psalm” added to 
it, would be sufficiently insured against any such shocking 
suppositions on the part of the future student of English 
as that it pointed to Samuel instead of David as author of 
the sacred lyrics, or that it was a development out of the 
mystical letters “S. M.” placed in the singing-books at 
the head of so many of their number; him (hymn) would 


be, by like means, saved from confusion with the personal — —< 


pronoun—and so on. We do not wish-to show an 


188 HOW SHALL WE SPELL ? 


unbecoming levity or disrespect, but it is very hard to 
answer with anything approaching to seriousness such 
arguments as those we are combating; “absurd” and 
‘* preposterous,” and such impolite epithets, fit them 
better than any others we can find in the English vocab- 
ulary. They are extreme examples of the fallacies to 
which learned men will sometimes resort in support of a 
favorite prejudice. 

Many, however, who have too much insight and caution 
to put their advocacy of the ‘ historic ” or Tibetan prin- 
ciple in English orthography upon the false ground of its 
indispensableness to etymologic science, will yet defend 
it as calculated to lead on the writer or speaker of our 
language to inquire into the history of the words he uses, 
thus favoring the development of an etymologizing ten- 
dency. He who now pronounces sam and him, they 
think, would be liable, if he also wrote those syllables 
phonetically, to just simply accept them as names of the 
things they designate, like pig and pen, without giving a 
thought to their derivation; whereas, if he knows that 
they are and must be spelt psalm and hymn, his natural 
curiosity to discover the cause of so singular a phenome- 
non may plunge him into the Greek language, and make 
a philologist of him almost before he suspects what he is 
about. There is more show of reason in this argument ; 
but whether more reason, admits of doubt. The anom- 
alies of our orthography, unfortunately, are far from be- 
ing calculated, in the gross, to guide the unlearned to 
etymological research. For one of them which is of value 
in the way of incitement and instruction, there are many 
which can only confuse and discourage. In the first 
place, there are not a few downright blunders among 
them. Thus, to cite a familiar instance or two, the g of 
sovereign (French souverain, Italian sovrano) has no busi- 
ness there, since the word has nothing whatever to with 
reigning ; island (from Anglo-Saxon ealand) is spelt 


HOW SHALL WE SPELL ? 189 


with an s out of ignorant imitation of isle (Latin insula), 
with which it is wholly unconnected ; in like manner, an 
Z has stumbled into could, in order to assimilate it in look 
to its comrades in office, would and should ; women is for 
an original wif-men, and its phonetic spelling would be 
also more truly historical. Again, another part, and not 
a small one, seem to the ordinary speller the merest con- 
fusion (and are often, in fact, nothing better), calculated 
to lead him to nothing but lamentation over his hard lot, 
that he is compelled to master them. Take a series of 
words like believer, receiver, weaver, fever, reever, and try 
how many of the community are even accessible to proof 
that their orthographic discordances are bottomed on 
anything tangible. There is in some persons, as we well 
know, an exquisite etymologic sensibility which can feel 
and relish a historical reminiscence wholly imperceptible 
to men of common mould; to which, for instance, the 
u of honour is a precious and never-to-be-relinquished 
token that the word is derived from the Latin honor not 
directly, but through the medium of the French honneur : 
and we look upon it with a kind of wondering awe, as we 
do upon the superhuman delicacy of organization of the 
‘‘ true princess” in Andersen’s story, who felt the pea so 
painfully through twenty mattresses and twenty eider- 
down beds; but it is so far beyond us that we cannot 
pretend to sympathize with it, or even to covet its posses- 
sion. If we are to use a suggestive historic orthography, 
we should like to have our words remodeled a little in its 
favor: if we must retain and value the 6 of doubt (Latin 
dubitare), as sign of its descent, we crave also a p in 
count (French compter, Latin computare), and at least a 
6, if not an r also, in priest (Greek presbuteros); we are 
not content with but one silent letter in alms, as relic of 
the stately Greek word eleémosuné ; we contemplate 
with only partial satisfaction the J of calm and walk, 
while we miss it in such and which (derivatives from so- 


190 | HOW SHALL WE SPELL ? 


like and who-like). Why, too, should we limit the sug- 
gestiveness of our terms to the latest stages of their his- 
tory ? Now that the modern school of linguistic science, 
with the aid of the Sanskrit and other distant and bar- 
barous tongues, claims to have penetrated back to the 
very earliest roots out of which our language has grown, 
let us take due account of its results, and cunningly con- 
vert our English spelling into a complete course of philo- 
logical training. 

We have, however, no intention of taking upon our- 
selves here the character of reformers or of proposers of 
reforms; only, when this and the other principle are put 
forward as valuable, we cannot well help stepping aside 
a moment to see where we should be led to if, like true 
men, we attempted to carry out our principles. As re- 
gards the historic element in English orthography, we 
think it evident enough that its worth and interest do 
not at all le in its instructing effect upon the general 
public who use the language, but rather in its tendency to 
call up pleasing associations in the minds of the learned, 
of those who are already more or less familiar with the 
sources from which our words come. It is much more an 
aristocratic luxury than a popular benefit. ‘To the in- 
strument which is in every one’s hands for constant use 
it adds a new kind of suggestiveness for those who know 
what it means, and gives them the satisfaction of feeling 
that, though they may not wield the instrument more 
successfully than others, there are peculiarities in its 
structure which they alone appreciate. Such a satisfac- 
tion is a selfish one, and improperly and wrongly ob- 
tained, if bought by a sacrifice of any measure of conven- 
lence or advantage to the great public of speakers and 
writers. 

What may be the general loss in these respects we 
will not now stop to inquire. For it is incontrovertibly 
true that, whether the natural merits of the two princi- 


HOW SHALL WE SPELL? 191 


ples we have been considering—the Chinese and the 
Tibetan, the differentiation of homonymous words and 
the retention in writing of former modes of utterance — 
be greater or less, they are practically held in the most 
complete subordination to another, namely a simple con- 
servation of the modes of spelling now current. All 
that is said in their defense is as much aside from the 
true point as were the pleas put forth a few years since 
by the Southern slave-owners respecting the curse of 
Canaan and the separate origin and inferior endowments 
of the negro race. Those pleas were urged, no doubt, 
with a certain kind of sincerity ; but we have yet to hear 
of the ethnologically learned or the devout Southerner who 
ever set a slave free because the blood of the superior race 
predominated in him, or because only the sixteenth part 
of his lineage was to be traced to Ham, while the rest 
went back to Shem or Japhet, or both. ‘ Possession is 
nine points of the law” and ‘“‘ partus sequitur ventrem” 
were the true proof-texts and scientific principles on 
which the master’s right reposed ; and so also *“ whatever 
is, is right ’’ constitutes the complete ethical code of him 
who is defending English spelling. Anything else is 
mere casuistry, a casting of dust in the eyes of the ob- 
jector. The paramount consideration, which really de- 
cides every case, is that the existing orthography must be 
perpetuated ; if for this and that word any other appar- 
ently supporting considerations of any kind soever can be 
found, they may be made the most of — yet without cre- 
ating a precedent, or establishing a principle which is to 
be heeded in any other case, where it would make in 
favor of achange. The advocate of “ historic ” spelling 
insists as strongly upon retaining the / of could as that of 
would, and fights against a p in count not less vehe- 
mently than in favor of a 6 in doubt ; the difference of re- 
ceive and believe is no more sacred in his eyes than the 
sameness of cleave and cleave. Now, we have no quarrel 


192 : HOW SHALL WE SPELL ? 


with any one who plants himself squarely and openly 
upon the conservative ground, and declares that our Eng- 
lish spelling is, with all its faults and inconsistencies, 
good enough for its purpose, that every item of it is con- 
secrated by usage and enshrined in predilections, and 
therefore must and shall be maintained. What we cannot 
abide is that he who means this, and this only, should 
give himself the airs of one who is defending important 
principles, and keeping off from the fabric of English 
speech rude hands that would fain mar its beauty and 
usefulness. Orthographic purism is, of all kinds of pu- 
rism, the lowest and the cheapest, as is verbal criticism of 
all kinds of criticism, and word-faith of all kinds of or- 
thodoxy. As Mephistopheles urges upon the Student, 
when persuading him to pin his belief upon the letter, — 
Von einem Wort lasst sich kein Iota rauben, 

‘every iota of the written word may be fought for ’— and 
that, too, even by the tyro who has well conned his spell- 
ing-book, though his knowledge of his native speech end 
chiefly there. Many a man who could not put together 
a single paragraph of nervous, idiomatic English, nor 
ever had ideas enough to fill a paragraph of any kind, 
whose opinion on a matter of nice phraseology or even of 
disputed pronunciation would be of use to no living being, 
fancies himself entitled to add after his name “ defender 
of the English language,” because he is always strict to 
write honour instead of honor, and travelled instead of 
traveled, and never misses an opportunity, public or pri- 
vate, to sneer at those who do otherwise. 

In what we have said, we have been solicitous only to 
put the defense of our present modes of spelling upon its 
true ground, showing that it is a pure and simple conser- 
vatism, which by no means founds itself upon useful prin- 
ciples, historical or other, but only in certain cases hides 
itself behind them. We may next inquire what reasons 
we have for finding fault with this conservatism and its 


HOW SHALL WE SPELL ? 193 


results, and for wishing and attempting to overthrow 
them. 

In the first place, English orthography violates the true 
ideal of the relation of written language to spoken, and 
of an alphabetic mode of writing. To those who have 
never looked into the subject, it may seem that a pho- 
netic spelling, giving one sign to every sound and one 
sound to every sign, is a rude and simple device, which an 
enlightened ingenuity might well enough be tempted to 
enrich and adorn by mixing it with elements of higher 
significance. But the student of language knows that 
the case is far otherwise ; that an alphabet is the final re- 
sult of centuries, even ages, of education and practice in 
the use of written characters. As a historical fact, writ- 
ing began, not with representing spoken language, but 
with trying to do over again what language does — to put 
occurrences and ideas directly before the mind by intelli- 
gible symbols. Only later, and by an indirect process, 
were men brought to see that, having already produced 
one system of means, namely words, for bodying forth 
thought and knowledge, it was needless to devise another 
and independent one for the same purpose; that their 
written tongue might best undertake simply to place be- 
fore the eye their spoken tongue. The great step toward 
the perfection of writing was taken when it was fully 
subordinated to speech, and made to represent the names 
of things instead of things themselves. But even this 
brought it out of the purely pictorial into a hieroglyphic 
stage, where it long continued, awkward and unmanage- 
able; and another difficult and protracted process of de- 
velopment was necessary, in order to impart to it a pho- 
netic character, so that it should signify words no longer 
by simple indivisible symbols, but by characters represent- 
ing sounds. Our best illustration of the whole history is 
furnished in the Egyptian monuments, where we see signs 
of every kind — purely didactic pictures, figures of objects 

13 ; 


194 HOW SHALL WE SPELL? 


representing those objects themselves, other figures stand- 
ing for the names of the objects they depict, others for 
some part, as the consonants, of those names, others, 
finally, as single letters for the initial sound of their names 
—all mingled together and exchanging with one another, 
making up a system of writing not less inconsistent than 
the English, and infinitely more intricate and _ trouble- 
some. The Egyptians were too conservative to seize 
upon the one practically valuable principle which their 
system contained, and to carry it out consistently, casting 
aside its inherited incumbrances. But what they could 
not do was within the power of another people. Every 
one knows that our own alphabet goes back, through the 
Latin and Greek, to the Phenician ; and it is at least ex- 
ceedingly probable, though far from admitting of demon- 
stration, that the Phenicians learned to write of the 
Egyptians. Either of the Egyptian or of some other 
analogous history of alphabetic development the Pheni- 
cians inherited the results, and their alphabet was a sim- 
ple scheme of twenty-two characters, the names of which 
(aleph, ‘ bull,’ beth, * house,’ ete. ; whence the Greek alpha, 
beta, etc.) began respectively with the sound which each 
represented. Yet this system, while it discarded every- 
thing but the purely phonetic part of the Egyptian, was 
no complete phonetic alphabet; it wrote the consonants 
alone, leaving the vowels to be supplied by the reader. 
It received its full perfection only upon passing into the 
keeping of the Greeks ; they converted some of its super- 
fluous characters into vowel-signs, added others, and pro- 
duced at last an instrumentality which could and did set 
faithfully before the sight the whole structure of spoken 
speech. Among all the alphabets of the world, ancient 
and modern, there are few, excepting the Greek and its 
derivatives, which have attained this completeness — to 
which there does not cleave some taint of a pictorial or a 
syllabic character. 


HOW SHALL WE SPELL ? 195 


The Latin alphabet, taken from the Greek, fully ac- 
cepted and carried out the phonetic principle, rejecting 
some of the Greek signs and devising new, so as to make 
an exact adaptation of its modes of writing to its modes 
of utterance. Nor have its descendants, in their turn, 
meant to do otherwise. But it is very difficult to main- 
tain the principle in perfect purity, because the spoken 
forms of words change more insidiously than the written ; 
all tongues which have had a long written history have 
become more or less ‘‘ historic’ in their spelling, change 
of orthography lagging ever behind the heels of change 
of pronunciation. And peculiarly unfavorable circum- 
stances, which in no small part can be distinctly pointed 
out, have suffered to grow up a greater discordance be- 
tween the written and the spoken speech among us than 
in any other community of equal enlightenment. This 
is the whole truth; and any attempt to make it appear 
otherwise savors only of the wisdom of the noted fox who 
lost his brush in a trap, and wanted to persuade himself 
and the world that the curtailment was a benefit and a 
decoration. Every departure from the rule that writing 
is the handmaid of speech is a dereliction of principle, 
and an abandonment of advantages which seemed to have 
been long ago assured to us by the protracted labors of 
many generations of the most gifted races known to his- 
tory. The handmaid has no right to set up to be wiser 
and better than her mistress in a single particular. That 
the written word in any case deviates from the spoken is 
a fault; which may, indeed, admit of palliation, even 
amounting to excuse, but which it is an offense against 
all true science and sound sense to extol as a merit. 

We have, of course, no intention of bringing forward 
the unfaithfulness of our orthography to the highest ideal 
of a mode of writing as a sufficient reason for an ortho- 
graphic revolution. A grand practical question, which 
touches so nearly the interests of so many millions of 


196 } HOW SHALL WE SPELL ? 


writers and speakers, is not to be settled by sentimental 
considerations — any more by this which we have adduced 
upon the one side, than, upon the other, by the gratifica- 
tion of the small class of curious heads who may delight 
themselves with seeing Greek and Latin and Old English 
utterances dimly reflected in our modern spelling. But 
it was desirable, and even necessary, to draw out the ex- 
position, in order to show that the phonetists have the 
-advantage upon their side, not less in regard to the prin- 
ciple involved in the cause they are defending than in re- 
gard to the convenience and enlightenment of the histori- 
cal student of language. 

It is upon practical grounds that our final judgment 
of the value of English orthography must mainly rest. 
The written language is a universal possession, an instru- 
ment of communication for the whole immense commu- 
nity of English speakers, and anything which impairs its 
convenience and manageableness as an instrument is such 
a defect as demands active measures for removal. Now, 
no one can question that the practical use of our tongue 
is rendered more difficult by the anomalies of its written 
form. We do not, indeed, easily realize how much of 
the learning-time of each rising generation is taken up 
with mastering orthographical intricacies; how much 
harder it is for us to learn to read at all, and to read and 
write readily and correctly, than it would be if we wrote 
as we speak. We accomplished the task so long ago, 
most of us, that we have forgotten its severity, and de- 
cline to see any reason why others should ask to be re- 
lieved from it. Teachers, however, know what it is, as 
do those who for want of a sufficiently severe early drill- 
ing, or from defect of native capacity, continue all their 
lives to be inaccurate spellers. Such may fairly plead 
that their orthographical sins are to be imputed, in great 
part, not to themselves, but to the community, which has 
established and sustains an institution so unnecessarily 


HOW SHALL WE SPELL ? 197 


cumbrous. We may see yet more clearly the nature of 
the burden it imposes by considering what it is to foreign- 
ers. Our language, from the simplicity of its grammati- 
eal structure, would be one of the easiest in the world to 
learn if it were not loaded with its anomalous orthog- 
raphy. As the matter stands, a stranger may acquire 
the spoken tongue by training of the mouth and ear, or 
the written by help of grammar and dictionary, and in 
either case the other tongue will be nearly as strange to 
him as if it belonged to an unknown race. It is doubt- 
less within bounds to say that the difficulty of his task is 
thus doubled. And this item must count for not a little 
in determining the currency which the English shall 
win as a world-language—a destiny for which it seems 
more decidedly marked out than any other cultivated 
speech. In view of what we expect and wish it to become, 
we have hardly the right to hand it down to posterity 
with such a millstone about its neck as its present or- 
thography. 

It is, moreover, to be noted that a phonetic spelling, far 
from contributing, as its enemies claim, to the alteration 
and decay of the language, would exercise an appreciable 
conserving influence, and make for uniformity and fixed- 
ness of pronunciation. So loose and indefinite is now the 
tie between writing and utterance, that existing differ- 
ences of utterance hide themselves under cover of an or- 
thography which fits them all equally well, while others 
spring up unchecked. No small part of the conservative 
foree expends itself upon the visible form alone ; whereas, 
if the visible and audible form were more strictly accord- 
ant, it would have its effect upon the latter also. The 
establishment of a phonetic orthography would imply the 
establishment and maintenance of a single authoritative 
and intelligible standard of pronunciation, the removal of 
the more marked differences of usage between the culti- 
vated speakers of different localities, and the reduction 


198 | HOW SHALL WE SPELL ? 


of those of less account; and it would hold in check — 
though nothing can wholly restrain — those slow and in- 
sidious changes which creep unawares into the utterance 
of every tongue. 

One more thing is worthy of at least a brief reference 
— namely, that a consistent spelling would awaken and 
educate the phonetic sense of the community. As things 
are now, the English speaker comes to the study of a 
foreign written language, and to the examination of pho- 
netic questions generally, at a disadvantage when com- 
pared with those to whom other tongues are native. He 
has been accustomed to regard it as only natural and 
proper that any given sound should be written in a va- 
riety of different ways, that any given sign should possess 
a number of different values; and it requires a special 
education to give him an inkling of the truth that every 
letter of our alphabet had originally, and still preserves 
in the main, outside of his own language, a single unvary- 
ing sound. His ideas of the relations of the vowels are 
hopelessly awry ; he sees nothing strange in the designa- 
tion of the vowel-sounds of pin and pine, or of pat and 
pate, or of pun and pure, as corresponding short and 
long, although we might as well assert that dog and cat, 
or that horse and cow, or that sun and moon, are corre- 
sponding male and female. And he reads off his Latin 
and Greek in tones that would have driven frantic any 
Roman or Athenian who suspected it to be his own 
tongue that was so murdered, with unsuspecting compla- 
cency, even flattering himself that he appreciates their 
rhythm and melody. -It is not the least telling of the 
indications he furnishes of a sense for the fitness of 
things debauched by a vicious training, that he is capable 
of regarding a historical spelling as preferable to a pho- 
netic — that is to say, of thinking it better to write our 
words as we imagine that some one else pronounced them 
a long time ago than as we pronounce them ourselves. 


HOW SHALL WE SPELL? 199 


A thoroughly consistent spelling would be a far more 
valuable means of philological education than such a one 
as we now follow, were the latter twice as full as it is of 
etymological suggestiveness. 

We are, then, clearly of opinion that a phonetic orthog- 
raphy is, of itself, in all respects desirable, and that 
there is no good reason against introducing it save the 
inconvenience of so great a change. Every theoretical 
and practical consideration makes in its favor. At the 
same time, our hope of a reform is exceedingly faint. 
No reform is possible until the community at large — or 
at least, the greater body of the learned and highly edu- 
cated — shall see clearly that the advantage to be gained 
by it is worth the trouble it will entail: and whether 
and when they will be brought to do so is very doubtful. 
At present the public mind is in a most unnaturally sen- 
sitive condition upon the subject ; it will listen to no sug- 
gestion of a change from any quarter, in any word or class 
of words. The great need now is to enlighten it, to show 
that its action is the result of a blind prejudice alone, and 
really founded on none of the reasons which are usually 
alleged in its support ; that there is nothing sacred in the 
written word ; that language is speech, not spelling ; and 
that practical convenience is the only true test of the 
value of an orthographic system. Until this work is ac- 
complished, all reformers will be likely to meet the fate 
of Noah Webster, one of the best-abused men of his gen- 
eration, and for one of the most creditable of his deeds, 
the attempt to amend in a few particulars our English 
spelling — an attempt for which (however fragmentary 
it may have been, and ill-judged in some of its parts) 
we ourselves feel inclined to forgive him many of his false 
etymologies and defective definitions. We have read in 
the story-books that a certain Prince Nosey was con- 
demned bya malevolent fairy to wear a portentously long 
nose until he should himself become convinced that it 


200 ) HOW SHALL WE SPELL ? 


was too long, which salutary but unpalatable truth was 
kept indefinitely concealed from him by the flattery of 
his courtiers. The English-speaking people are in some- 
what the same case; and though fairy days are now over, 
and we can no longer hope that our superfluous nasal 
inches will drop off the moment we recognize their super- 
fluity, we know that at any rate we shall not lose them 
sooner, because we shall not sooner be willing to set 
about the work of ridding ourselves of them. Of course 
our words would look very oddly to us now in a phonetic 
dress ; but that is merely because we are used to them in 
another. So our friends the ladies, if they should sud- 
denly appear before our sight in the head-gear which 
they are going to wear five years hence, would shock us 
and provoke the cut direct ; yet we shall by that time be 
looking back to the bonnets of this season as the height 
of absurdity. If once brought to the adoption of a con- 
sistent orthography, we should soon begin to regard with 
aversion our present ideographs and historiographs, and 
wonder that we could ever have preferred, or even toler- 
ated them. It is easy now to raise a general laugh against 
the man who writes news “ nuz;” but so the Englishman 
can count upon an admiring and sympathizing audience 
among his own countrymen when he turns against the 
Frenchman that crushing question, “ What can you think 
of a man who calls a hat a* shappo ?’’’ — and the appeal 
is really to the same narrow prejudice and vulgar igno- 
rance in the one case as in the other. 

The future is a very long period, and a great deal is 
possible in the course of it. There is no telling, spite of 
present appearances, that the public temper may not 
come to admit, some time, the introduction of improve- 
ments of one kind and another into our orthography, 
which shall prepare the way for a more thorough reform. 
Meanwhile we look with interest and respect upon the 
effort of every one who is laboring toward that end, since, 


HOW SHALL WE SPELL ? 201 


however little he may seem to accomplish, he is at least 
contributing his mite toward the arousing of public atten- 
tion to the subject, and helping perhaps to inaugurate a 
change of feeling. 

Respecting the further difficulties — many and serious, 
and only partially apprehended by the greater part of 
those who undertake the making of phonetic systems — 
which beset the labors of the orthographic reformer, and 
render his success doubtful, even supposing the prelimi- 
nary obstacle of which we have been treating to be cleared 
away, we cannot, here and now, undertake to speak. 


Viki 


THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUN- 
CIATION. 


-——_$>-——- 


It is a fact well known to the students of language 
that no living tongue is spoken in an entirely accordant 
manner by the whole body of those to whom it is native. 
Differences of utterance (along with differences of phra- 
seology and signification) sometimes rise to such a degree 
as to produce strongly defined dialects, the speakers of 
which can hardly, if at all, understand one another. The 
existence of such “dialects,” alongside the approved 
speech of the cultivated, 1s as general as the existence of 
a cultivated speech. But even in the utterance of the lat- 
ter the same discordances occur; on a smaller scale, in- 
deed, yet marked enough to allow the various locality of 
different well-educated speakers to be detected by one 
who has the requisite quickness of ear, and a sufficiently 
wide experience. We could not expect it to be otherwise. 
The same effects are due to the same causes, in the one 
case as in the other; they only differ in degree with the 
different efficiency and length of action of the causes. 
The universally inherent tendency of language to vary 
in the usage of various individual speakers can be kept 
well under, but it cannot be entirely repressed, by the 
counteracting influence of communication in its various 
forms, of instruction, of the imitation of accepted models. 
Even educated usage has never been made precisely ac- 
cordant, down to the last particular; and if it were once 
by a miracle made so, it could not be kept so ; the lapse of 


THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 203 


a certain time would show the old state of things brought 
back again. Discordant pronunciation, within certain 
narrowly defined limits, is the inevitable condition of ex- 
istence of even the best regulated language. Recogniz- 
ing this truth, the student of language is not too much 
disturbed by his observation of deviations from the 
strictest norm of fashionable utterance — not even if he 
observes them in himself; they are all matter for inter- 
ested scientific curiosity ; they are indications of what 
has been, or of what is going to be, or of what is trying 
to be but will not succeed in becoming, good and ap- 
proved speech ; they are part and parcel of that pervad- 
ing and ceaseless play and change which makes the life 
of language. 

If I endeavor, then, to give in this paper an analysis and 
description of the elements of my own native pronuncia- 
tion of English, it is partly in order to furnish a small con- 
tribution to the subject of English dialectic utterance — 
a subject which is now receiving more attention than ever 
hitherto,! and is.entitled to much more than it receives. 
In faithfully reporting my own peculiarities of utterance, 
I shall have to make, at one and another point, what 
may be called the ‘‘ confessions of a provincial ;” but this, 
for the reason already stated, I shall not allow to daunt 
me. For aught that I know, my speech may be taken 
as a fair specimen of that of the ordinarily educated New 
Englander from the interior ; a region where (to charac- 
terize it by a single trait) the proper distinction of shall 
and will was as strictly maintained, and a slip in the use 
of the one for the other as rare, and as immediately 
noticeable and offensive (unfortunately, that is the case 
no longer), as in the best society of London.? 

1 Especially from English scholars, under the lead of Mr. Ellis and the Lon- 
don Philological Society. 

2 My place of residence and education, up to sixteen years old, was in Massa- 


chusetts, on the Connecticut river, at Northampton —a shire-town of long 
standing, which in my youth had not lost its ancient and well-established repu- 


204 THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION, 


But my object is also in part to incite and help some 
who are speakers of English to a better comprehension of 
the phonetics of their own language. The study of 
phonetics has also long been coming forward into more 
and more prominence as an essential part of the study of 
language ; a thorough understanding of the mode of pro- 
duction of alphabetic sounds, and of their relations to 
one another as determined by their physical character, 
has become an indispensable qualification of a linguistic 
scholar. And he who cannot take to pieces his own na- 
tive utterance, and give a tolerably accurate account of 
every item in it, lacks the true foundation on which 
everything else should repose. In order the better to ad- 
vance this object, I shall take up the elements of utter-- 
ance in systematic order, with reference to their mutual 
relations, and their character as members of a unitary 
and harmonious scheme.! 


tation as a home of “old families,’ and a scene of special culture and high-bred 
society ; the birthplace of President Timothy Dwight, and long the home of 
President Jonathan Edwards. My father was a merchant and banker, not 
himself a college-taught man, but son of a graduate of Harvard ; my mother’s 
parents were from the shore of Connecticut, her father a clergyman and gradu- 
ate of Yale. ‘ 

1 The profoundest phonetist of the day, and especially the highest authority 
on matters of English pronunciation, is Alexander J. Ellis, lately President of 
the London Philological Society. Under his influence and instruction, there is 
growing up in England a most promising school of phonetic science. The last 
issued part of his great work on Early English Pronunciation, received after 
most of this paper was written, contains a vast mass of observations, deter- 
minations, and discussions in phonology, which no one who wishes to pene- 
trate deeply into the subject should leave unstudied. If it had reached me 
earlier, I should perhaps have laid it at the basis of my own exposition, only 
noting such deviations from the author’s scheme as I found it necessary to make. 
As things are, I have preferred to goon in my own independent way, without 
detailed reference to or criticism of other authorities. I have especially in view, 
on the one hand, the needs of the beginner or less practiced student; and, on 
the other hand, the working out and presentation of a single connected scheme 
of the English spoken alphabet, according to its physical relations. 

I have not added pictorial representations of the defined positions of the 
mouth-organs, such as are given by Max Miiller in the third lecture of his sec- 
ond course on language, and by A. M. Bell in his ‘‘ Visible Speech,’’ mainly 
because they seem to me of only subordinate value; they illustrate, rather than 
help define or teach. No cross-section of the mouth can be more than a rude 


THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 205 


As preliminary to our descriptions, we need to note 
only briefly, and in its simplest form, the theory of artic- 
ulate utterance. Our lungs act as bellows, sending a 
column of air with more or less of force through the 
windpipe, to find exit at the mouth or nose. At the 
upper extremity of the windpipe, in the box of compli- 
cated construction called the larynx, are a pair of mem- 
branes, which in their ordinary relaxed state leave a wide 
triangular opening for the breath to traverse freely ; but 
which can be by voluntary action brought close together 
and stretched, so that their tense edges, the vocal cords, 
vibrate under the impulses of the passing column of air, 
like the reed of an organ-pipe, and produce sound, of 
various pitch. Then the pharynx (the upper back cay-- 
ity, continuous with the esophagus, into which the larynx 
opens), the cavity of the mouth, and the passages of the 
nose, constitute together a sounding-box set over the res- 
onant organ of the larynx, and by their changes of size 
and form they give variety of audible character to the 
fundamental tone of the organ. Wherein lies the sep- 
arate audible character of each articulate utterance, and 
how it depends upon the muscular action of the throat 
and mouth, are matters of acoustic rather than of pho- 
netic science ; the latter attempts only to trace out and 
define the muscular action which actually produces the 
utterance. 

1. In any discussion of the alphabet, the first place 
must necessarily be given to the a of far, father. It 
is the fundamental vowel-tone of the human voice, the 
sound which is emitted from the larynx when mouth and 
throat are widely opened, when all obstructing and modi- . 
fying influences are put as much as possible out of the 
way of the issuing column of intoned breath. No other 


and insufficient depiction of the mouth-action; and the very considerable dis- 
cordance between Miiller’s figures and Bell’s (the latter, to be sure, are in gen- 
eral far the better) shows the great difficulty of attaining to anything like accu-. 
racy of representation. 


206 THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 


definition of it than this is correct and properly charac- 
teristic. It is the sound which the sign @ was at the out- 
set made in order to represent, and which regularly and 
usually belongs to that sign in other languages than Eng- 
lish. We call it the “Italian a,” taking the Italian as 
representative of the languages which have preserved to 
the written character its true original sound; we might 
just as well call it the German, or Latin, or Greek. In 
‘the earliest Indo-European speech, this a was by far the 
most common of articulate utterances; in the Sanskrit, in 
its long and short forms, it makes over seventy per cent. 
of the vowels, and about thirty per cent. of the whole 
alphabet; in the oldest Germanic dialect, the Meeso- 
Gothic, it is still fourteen per cent. of the alphabet; in 
the German, only about five per cent.; and in my utter- 
ance of English, little more than half of one per cent., 
being almost the rarest of the simple vowel sounds.! ‘The 
tendency of speech has been to reduce this openest of vow- 
els to a closer form, by substituting for it a variety of 
utterances requiring less expansion of the articulating or- 
gans. But there is hardly another language, if there be 
any other, which has carried this tendency so far, and 
retained so little of the a-sound, as ours. An 7 follow- 
ing it in the same syllable has been with us the most 
efficient means of its preservation: thus, in are, debar, 
art, margin, harp, carnation. And it is almost only in 
this class of words that the most approved modern usage 
sanctions it. Until quite recently, it was admitted in 
other classes also: thus, in calm, calf, halve ; in answer, 
chance, blanch, pant, can’t, aunt; in alas, pass, bask, 
clasp, blaspheme, last ; in path, lath ; in laugh, staff, raft, 
after ; and in many other words like these. In all of 
them the leading orthoépists now require a ‘“ flattened ” 


1 Respecting the English percentages given here and later, see the table and 
its explanation at the end of this article ; those of the other languages 
named I take from Forstemann, in Kuhn’s Zeitschrift, ii. 35 seq. 


THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 207 


a, which is described either as identical with the a of fat 
and fan, or, more often, as intermediate between far and 
fat. But local usage (I cannot say how extensively) 
still retains the old open a@ in these words; and, in my 
opinion, is justified in clinging to it as long as possible. 
In my own mouth, certainly, they are all still uttered 
with the a of far ; and in my natural utterance I have 
absolutely no knowledge of anything intermediate be- 
tween far and fat. Whether English pronunciation is 
likely to establish such an intermediate as a permanent 
constituent of our spoken alphabet, or whether the words 
which have fallen from the stage of far will end with be- 
coming completely and confessedly like fat, I would not 
undertake to pronounce, although I confess to inclining 
toward the latter view. 

The interjection ah! and father are examples of a 
small class of sporadic cases in which the true a-sound 
appears; I learned to pronounce gape with the same; 
and plant is, I believe, the only word in which I ever 
hear it without myself pronouncing it. The subtraction 
of all the classes specified would reduce the occurrence of 
the sound in English to a quarter of one per cent. 

We are accustomed to reckon the a of far as a “ long ” 
vowel. But the distinction in actual quantity of long 
and short vowels in English is less marked and less con- 
sistently maintained than in some other languages, be- 
cause our longs differ decidedly also in quality from our 
shorts. 

Starting, now, from the indifferent or neutral openness 
of a (in far), and beginning to narrow the current of 
breath by approaching the flat of the tongue toward the 
palate, we produce by gradually increasing degrees of 
closure a series of vowels to which we may conveniently 
(though rather loosely) give the name of “ palatal.” 
The three principal degrees of approach give, in their 
order, the vowel-sounds of pan, pen, and pin. 


208 THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 


2. To the a of pan we give the name of “short a,” 
from its greatly superior frequency among the short 
sounds given to that character, and from its standing 
oes in the relation of corresponding short to our * long 

” (see below, No. 5),-as in defame defamatory, grateful 
Be vide, nature natural. We also call it ‘ flat a,” by a 
ficure of questionable propriety; and we are wont to 
speak of the reduction of the proper a-sound (far) to or 
‘toward it (not infrequent in parts of the English-speak- 
ing community, as also in Parisian French: it is abso- 
lutely unknown in my dialect, as has been pointed out 
above) as a ‘ flattening” of the vowel. A slight exag- 
geration and prolongation of the flat a gives a peculiarly 
disagreeable and vulgar effect. ‘The sound is among the 
most common of English vowels, forming about three 
and one third per cent. of our utterance. Lepsius writes 
it by an a with subscript e (thus, a), thus marking it, 
very suitably, as an a slightly verging toward e. Its 
sign in Ellis’s “ Paleotype’”’! is @; and this, for lack 
of type for the other, I shall use when necessary. 

8. This “short a” has, according to the approved 
pronunciation, no corresponding long vowel. In my own 
usage, however, the vowels of such words as pare, pair, 
prayer, there, their, wear, have the same sound, a little 
protracted, and followed by the vanishing-sound of 
‘short wu” (but) which other long vowels take in a like 
situation, before r (e. g. hear, mire, sour, cure, soar: see 

elow, under 7). ‘The orthoépists require in this class of 
words an é-sound (as in they): it would, however, have 
to be described and reckoned as a separate alphabetic 
element in English speech, because it lacks the 7 vanish 
of the usual é. The utterance as “ short a” (@) is not 
infrequently mentioned as a dialectic variation, on both 
sides of the ocean; I have no information as to the ex- — 
tent of its occurrence. The difference between the two 


1 See the Introduction to his Karly English Pr onunciation. 


THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 209 


pronunciations in acoustic effect is so slight as to escape 
any other than an acute and attentive ear. 

I write this longer sound, for distinction from the other, 
with 2. 

The double sound which we have been considering is, 
as it seems to me, a true intermediate between a (far) 
and e (they, met), and thus markedly different from the 
French é and é or the German d@, with which it is some- 
times identified. ‘These are merely opener varieties of 
é; our @ is no more an e than it is an a. 

4. The “short e” of met is in fact the sound which 
the name indicates: that is to say, it is a short variety of 
that sound, intermediate between a (far) and 7 (pique), 
which the sign e was originally made to represent. The 
eis the most Protean of the vowels, the most variously 
and nicely shaded in different languages, the hardest to 
seize and reproduce with absolute exactness. Its sign 
(as we may express it) designates a space rather than a 
point in the transition from a to 7; it belongs to a whole 
class or series of sounds, differing slightly from one 
another in point of closeness. Our “ short e” is a pretty 
open member of the series, agreeing with the French é 
or é rather than é. It is one of our commonest sounds, 
forming, like the @ (fat), just about three and one third 
per cent. of our utterance. 

There is little discordance in general among English 
speakers as to the words in which this vowel-sound oc- 
curs. Examples of it are let, felt, flesh; bread, said, 
says, jeopard, treachery, any. So far as I know, any and 
many are the only words in which an ais allowed to be pro- 
nounced as “short e;’’ but, until I overcame the habit by 
a conscious effort, I always gave it the same sound in 
plague, snake, naked ; nor did I escape the pronunciation 
of catch as ketch —a deeply rooted error, almost universal 
among children in this part of the world. Deaf I heard 
so constantly as both dif and déf that I cannot now tell 

14 j 


210 THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 


which was more “natural” to me; leisure I always called 
léisure, as do, I believe, most Americans. | 

d. The. vowel in fate, fail, great, they, we call “long 
a,” by a regretable misnomer, growing out of the fact 
that a large proportion of the true long a’s of the lan- 
guage have undergone transformation into it; it is an 
e-sound, our nearest long correspondent to the short é of 
met. It is not, however, a pure vowel-sound ; it only be- 
gins with e, and slides off into ¢ (pin, pique). In our ordi- 
nary use, it seems to mea real slide from beginning to end, 
starting with e but not dwelling upon it ;! if, however, we 
protract it by an effort, as in singing, we lengthen the 
first element and wind up with the vanish.2 A more ac- 
curate representation of it, then, would be e#, or e' ; but, 
for simplicity’s sake, I shall take the liberty of using é. 
To compare the quality of its initial element with the é 
of met is not easy, since, if one protracts it in order to 
examine it more closely, one runs great risk of unwit- 
tingly distorting it a little. But I think the é begins with 
a closer utterance, in conformity with the usual relation 
between our short and long vowels. The difference, at 
any rate, is very slight, and of little account as compared 
with the distinction of the two sounds as homogeneous 
and as transitional. 

The é averages only half as frequent as é&, its percent- 
age in our utterance being but one and two thirds. 

6. What we call “short 7””—as in pin, hit, kick —is 
also really a short 7, and properly representable by 2 (or, 
where fuller distinction is necessary, 7). Like our other 
short vowels, however, it is very noticeably different in 
quality as well as quantity from the long 7 (which we call 
“long e:” see the next number) ; being, as I should de- 

1 That is to say, representable figuratively by e_———?, not by e___ >i. 
2 Of course, in all such cases, I say ‘‘ we”? and ‘‘our’”’ on the assumption, 


recognized as liable to error, that my utterance is like that of other speakers, 
and under correction from those who shall be satisfied that they pronounce dif- 


ferently. 


THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 211 


scribe it, a somewhat opener sound than the latter; the 
tongue, in order to form it, is not brought quite so close 
to the palate. A. M. Bell, on the contrary,! holds here, 
as in some other like cases, that the actual aperture be- 
tween tongue and palate is the same for both sounds ; and 
he distinguishes the 7 as “ primary ” and the tas ‘ wide,” 
— the latter term implying an expanded condition of the 
pharynx behind the aperture. To me, the action of a 
slight removal of tongue from palate in passing from 7 to 
i, and of a slight approximation in passing from 7 to 7, 
seems distinctly apparent. The eminent German phys- 
iologist, Dr. Briicke of Vienna,? calls our ‘“‘ short 7,” as 
well as the vowels of not, full, and but, “imperfectly 
formed.” Such a definition of their character is by no 
means to be approved. Every vowel, if simple, is an ut- 
terance through a single definite position of the mouth 
organs; and I know not what should justify us in declar- 
ing any one position more “ perfect ” or ‘‘ complete ”’ than 
any other. Thezis not less capable of being continued 
without change of quality than the 7% Thus, in singing, 
no English ear would fail to detect in a moment the per- 
former who, in giving a long note to an 7, should change 
its tone to t— putting seen, for example, in place of sin. 
Foreign phonetists are to be expected to find difficulty in 
dealing with the sound, because it is not native to them. 
The shortest 7 in French, for instance, is not a particle 
less close than our ‘“‘long e;” and the point is one on 
which a teacher of French pronunciation to English pu- 
pils has most strongly to insist. 

The short 7 is the most common of English vowel- 
sounds, constituting nearly six per cent. of our articula- 
tions. It is represented almost exclusively by 7: there 
is a small class of cases of y with this value, as in abyss ; 
but other words like busy and minute, like women, sieve, 


1 See below, p. 308. 
2 In his Grundziige der Phys. und Syst. der Sprachlaute, p. 23. 


212 THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 


been, guilt, and build, are only sporadic. Been is often 
uttered as én in New England, as doubtless elsewhere : 
I am not sure that I did not have to unlearn that pro- 
nunciation in early boyhood. 

7. What we call “long e,” asin meet, mete, meat, pique, 
is, as has been already pointed out, the long sound which 2 
was made to represent and still almost everywhere repre- 
sents. It is curious that our short palatal vowels, é andi, 
have kept very nearly their ancient sounds, while short a 
has been generally “ flattened ”’ or palatalized, into the w 
of pan, and while long a has been pushed a step farther 
down the palatal declivity, to the proper e-position, and 
long e alike step, to the proper 7-position ; long 2, finally, 
being raised to a diphthongal value, which will be dis- 
cussed later (No. 16). As to the quality of this articu- 
lation (which we will call and write long 7), there is, I 
believe, no question; nor as to its correspondence with 
the ‘kindred sounds of. other tongues: it is the French, 
German, Italian—in short, the universal—long 7, the 
closest vowel-sound that can be produced between the flat 
of the tongue and the palate: one may bring these organs 
so near together that a frication, a consonantal rustling, 
begins to appear, and what of vowel-sound remains will 
still be 7. 

The most frequent representatives of 7 in English, be- 
sides those instanced above, are ze, as in yveld, grief, or 
ev after c, as in receive, conceit, or ey final, as in key. 
There are a few sporadic cases like people, egis. Words 
like pique, fatigue, machine, shire Gn America), in which 
the sound has its own proper sign, are very few, hardly a 
dozen in all. The long 7 is only half as common as the 
short 7; its percentage is less than three (2#). 

With 7 ends, as we have seen, the series of vowels pro- 
duced by an approximation of the flat of the tongue to 
the palate; we have next to take up a like series, also 
beginning from the neutral openness of a, and involving 


THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 213 


an action of the lips. The series is illustrated, in the 
order of progressive closeness, by the vowels of what, war, 
hole, full, fool: any one can see for himself, by uttering 
these vowels in rapid succession, that they require a con- 
stantly increasing rounding of the lips, which reaches its 
extreme in 00, and that they tend to run together into a 
continuous slide. The lip action, however, as we must 
not fail also to notice, is not the only element in their 
production: there is an accompanying movement of ap- 
proach also between the base of the tongue and the back 
part of the palate, or the pharynx. One may hold his 
lips fixed immovably in a single position (that, for in- 
stance, in which e or 7 is naturally pronounced), and yet 
utter the vowels of what and all with perfect distinctness ; 
one can also, by an effort, make an o and oo, clearly rec- 
ognizable as such and nothing else, although wanting 
the smoothness of quality which belongs to our usual o 
and 00. And, on the other hand, one can fix the lips in 
the oo-position, and yet, by a violent and exaggerated 
opening action-at the base of the tongue, say an unex- 
ceptionable a (far). Change in the form of the resonant 
cavity which determines the vowel-sound is perhaps more 
effective, the nearer it is to the vibrating instrument in 
the larynx, and the deficient action at the orifice is capa- 
ble of being at least mainly compensated by additional 
action farther back: we may possibly even have to attrib- 
ute more essential importance to the lingual than to the 
labial movement in the formation of our series; yet, as 
the lips are the organs which we consciously and observa- 
bly move, and the tongue moves accordantly by an in- 
voluntary association which only close attention and study 
can discover, and as the vowels produced show abundant 
historical relations with the labial consonants, we are, as 
I think, fully justified in calling the series “labial.” 

8. The “short 0” of not, what, is the first of the 
labial series. It gets its ordinary name from the fact 


~ 


214 THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 


that so many of the short o’s of our language have been 
raised to it. It is often described and reckoned as the 
corresponding short sound to the vowel of all, for, ete. : 
and so, undoubtedly, it is in a certain sense; only, like 
all our other short vowels, it differs from its correspond- 
ent in being also of opener quality. And, to my ap- 
prehension, the difference is even greater than is usual 
between our longs and shorts ; the sound in question oc- 
cupies so nearly a medial position between the a of far 
and that of war that it might with equal propriety be re- 
garded as the short sound of either. It verges, therefore, 
very closely upon the true short a, as of German mann, alt, 
French ma, chat, and is acoustically much nearer to a 
(far) —though always sharply and accurately distin- 
guished from it—than is the so-called “short a” (@) 
of pan, etc. For the sake of convenience, therefore, I 
shall represent it by d.1 It is among the more common 
members of our alphabetic system, constituting more than 
two and one half per cent. of our sounds. Besides 0, and 
such substitutes for 0 as the ou of hough and the ow 
of knowledge, it has a not unfrequent representative in a, 
but only after a w-sound: thus, what, was, wan, quarry, 
squad. This last is a plain case of consonantal influence 
on the vowel tone; the labial semivowel has communi- 
cated a slight labial tinge to its successor. 

9. The next degree of labial closure gives the ‘ broad 
a” of all, or the au-sound. It is a step farther from the 
neutral a (far), and a true intermediate between it and 9, 
as the @ of pan between a and e (they). That the in- 
termediate sound on the labial side should be a long 
vowel, while on the palatal it is a short, is in accordance 
with the fact (to be noticed later) that in the labial se- 
ries the old long vowels have retained prevailingly their 


1 Ellis, in his Paleotype, uses a turned c (9) for the ‘‘ short 0’? of not, on, 
etc., and treats the vowel of what, etc., as distinct, and as the precise abbrevi- 
bison of that of all. 


THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 215 


original value. It much less common than the sound last 
discussed, making only one and one half per cent. of our 
articulate utterance. I write it (after Ellis’s example, in 
his ‘¢ Paleotype ”’) with a small capital 4. It has in our 
ordinary orthography a considerable variety of written 
repesentatives: thus, a before J, as in ball, bald, salt, false, 
and also where the 7 is silenced, as in talk and walk; a 
after w (a case of assimilation, like that noted just 
above), before 7, as in war, ward, warm, dwarf, and before 
nm in want ; very frequently 0, as in for, form, absorb, off, 
often, loss, lost, cloth, song ; regularly au and always aw, as 
in haul, daub, caught, law, fawn ; ow in bought and its like ; 
and a few scattering cases like broad, extraordinary. As 
regards this sound, there would be found more of individ- 
ual difference, I believe, in the treatment of the o-class 
than of any other. In my own usage, I am perfectly 
persuaded that all the words I have given, with many 
others of which they are examples, have precisely the 
same “ au-sound’’—although it would be easy, by 
drawling and distorting the utterance even a very little, 
to make some of them seem ungraceful and vulgar ; 
and I would say the same of God, dog, and their like, in 
which many persons certainly give the “short 0” (d@) 
sound of not. 

10. In the regular and authorized pronunciation of 
English there is no such thing, in accented syllables, as a 
true short 0. ‘The sound, however, is a well-recognized 
element of New England utterance, in a very small num- 
ber of words— whether and how far outside of New 
England and its colonies, and whether at all among the 
educated on the other side of the ocean, I cannot say. 
By it, none is as perfectly distinguished from kndwn, and 
whole from héle, as is full from fool, and sin from seen: 
and in these two words (though none is often pronounced 
like nun, even in New England) the sound in question 
most clearly and frequently appears. The list of words in 


216 THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 


which it is given varies, I think, not a little in different 
individuals : in my own practice, it is nearly or quite! re- 
stricted to none, whole, home, stone, smoke, folks, coat, 
cloak, toad, throat ; I have heard most often from others, 
in addition, béne and béat. It makes, of course, a hardly 
appreciable percentage of English utterance. 

Much as the orthoépists may discard and stigmatize 
this sound, a phonologist can hardly help wishing well in 
his secret heart to a tendency which would relieve the 
English spoken alphabet of such an anomaly and re- 
pen as the absence of a trueshort 6. 

11. The “long 0” of note, moat, etc., differs from the 
sound just treated in being a longer as a somewhat 
closer utterance, and especially in having a vanish of w, 
precisely as ¢ (they) has a vanish of 7. It is a little more 
common than é, as constituent of our utterance, making 
up one and three fourths per cent. Its written forms are 
numerous: besides those already instanced, it has fre- 
quently ow and ow, as in low, own, dough, four, shoulder. ; 
sometimes 00, as in door ; and sporadically such as beau, 
yeoman, memotr, sew. 

12. The true short w, as heard in full, bosom, could, 
good, stands related to its corresponding long, in fool, rule, 
move, etc., precisely as the 7 of sem to that of seen; that 
is to say (as I should define it), it has a slightly opener 
quality. One may, it seems to me, convince himself 
even more readily and certainly here than in the case of 
i and i that the difference is one of approach in the ar- 
ticulating organs rather than of expansion of the pharynx 
behind them; in passing from % to @, I, at least, am con- 
scious of a very perceptible impulse to round and close 
the lips a little more. The sound is one of the rarest in 
‘English utterance, being less than half of one per cent. 
Of its four written representatives, the w is by far the 


1T have lost the record which I made twenty-five years ago for the d-sound, 
and do not feel quite certain that I have restored it entire. 


THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 217 


most common, the others having but a few words apiece. 
A part of them, at least, are recent corruptions from the 
‘long wu” or oo-sound, by a process like that which, as 
above noticed, has converted whéle and hédme into whdle 
and héme ; and the change appears to be still going on: 
rood, roof, and root are words in which one often hears the 
short instead of the long sound; and root, especially, is 
very widely and commonly pronounced like foot; I 
learned it so, and still give it so, unless by a conscious ef- 
fort. I also naturally give the same vowel-sound to does ; 
and it is evidently historically older here than the pres- 
ent approved utterance (rhyming to buzz). 

The difference in the treatment by the language of its 
Jong and short vowels on the palatal and on the labial 
side is quite a marked feature in English phonology. 
‘Among the palatals it is the short e and 2 which have 
been so generally retained that we still call them by their 
proper names, and they are more than twice as numerons 
as the corresponding long sounds ; among the labials, the 
long o and u are comparatively unchanged, and they are 
many tinies more numerous than the corresponding shorts. 
And whereas the long vowels on the one side have be- 
come more palatal, the short vowels on the other have de- 
clined in point of labiality, the 6 becoming the almost 
neutral @ of not, and the % the wholly neutral vowel of 
but, fun, ete. 

13. The pure long u-sound of food, move, rule, ete., 
is the closest possible labial vowel, and verges, like 7% 
(pique), closely upon the consonants ; nor is it, I believe, 
distinguished by any even slight tinge of utterance from 
the ‘long w’s” of other languages in general. It has 
two principal classes of written representatives, the 
o-class and the u-class. The former, which have evidently 
changed their o-sound for an wu only in comparatively re- 
cent times, are o and oo, as in do, to, lose, womb, and 
room, fool; ow is used very little except in recent impor- 


218 THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 


tations from the French, like route, routine ; the Saxon 
uncouth is an almost isolated case ; wound (not from 
wind) is a bone of contention; its partial retention to 
modern times of the old u-sound is probably in part due 
to the euphonic influence of the w, and to the disposition 
to establish a distinction of utterance between it and 
wound from wind, and for the latter reason, at least, de- 
serves to be encouraged: I have heard it so constantly 
given both ways that neither is more natural to me than 
the other. The other class is made up of u, we (final), wi, 
ew, eu; as in duty, pure, due, fruit, rheum, feud, brew, 
few, stew. The u-sound in the first class, now, is preserved 
always pure; but in the other it is more or less mixed with 
a preceding z or y-sound, and this mixture constitutes one 
of the more striking anomalies and difficulties of English 
pronunciation. The matter is one upon which common 
usage, both in this country and in England, is consider- 
ably at variance, and modes of pronunciation unsanctioned 
by the orthoépic authorities are widely current, even 
among the educated. Heretical practices are, I believe, 
particularly prevalent in New England, and my own is 
an example of them. What my own is, I wish to de- 
scribe here as accurately as I can; at the same time con- 
fessing that I have never been willing to exchange it for 
such as was more in accordance with approved rules. It 
has so definite and regular a character, and reposes upon 
so reasonable a foundation, that I am not sure that it may 
not be the good English pronunciation of the future, 
while it has, I believe, a great deal of respectable support 
even at present, on both sides of the ocean. 

In my usage, and in that of those who pronounce with 
me, there is no intermediate sound or compromise what- 
ever between a pure w, the vowel-sound of food and move, 
and an absolute yu, in which the y-element is as dis- 
tinctly uttered as it would be if it were written. The 
general rule, with us as with the rest, is that the y-sound 


THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 219 


is prefixed ; and the exceptional cases, in which the y is 
omitted and the u left pure, are those in which the w is 
so preceded that the insertion of the semivowel between 
it and its predecessor is phonetically difficult. 

The y (as will be more particularly pointed out below) 
is a palatal semivowel, produced nearly in the articu- 
lating position of 7 (pique), or by an approximation of the 
flat of the tongue to the roof of the mouth in its after 
part. It is only, then, those consonants in forming which 
the tongue is called into action in some other way — that 
is to say, the lingual consonants— which present an 
obstacle to the insertion of the y. 

Hence, if the % (or eu, ew) be either initial, or preceded 
by the neutral aspiration f, or by the palatal mutes & 
and g, or by the labial consonants p, 6, f, v, and m, it is 
pronounced as yu: examples are use, unite, eulogy, ewe ; 
huge, exhume, hew; cube, acute, accurate; figure, gew- 
gaw; pure, compute, suppurate, spew; bureau, abuse, 
fabulous; fume, perfume, feud, few, nephew; ovule ; 
mute, munition, emulate, mew. In all the classes of words 
here instanced, there is probably no discordance among 
English speakers, as regards the way in which the w-sound 
is uttered. 

When we come, however, to the lingual consonants — 
namely, t, d, th (both kinds), s, z, n, 7, /—in forming 
which the tongue is already employed at its tip, the inter- 
polation of a new action at its base between the conso- 
nant. and the following vowel becomes a matter of more 
difficulty, and there is a tendency to get rid of it. 

And this tendency is much the strongest in the case of 
the 7, in uttering which the tongue is even rolled back at 
its tip into the roof of the mouth: to release it and bring 
the flat surface of the tongue up to nearly the same point 
requires so much movement and effort that the language 
generally has abandoned the attempt, and even the best 
authorities declare that after r, in any situation, the wu is 


220 © THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 


to be pronounced pure, like oo: thus, in rule, rude, rue, - 
accrue, construe, congruous, erudition. ‘There are, how- 
ever, those who do not observe this rule exactly ; though 
they may not quite introduce a y, they yet make a dif- 
ference between the w and 09, altering the sound a little 
in the direction of the w of burn. As for myself, my u 
in rude is precisely that in rood; and so in all other 
cases. 

After the other lingual consonants, English orthoépy is 
regarded as calling for the inserted y-sound, in all situa- 
tions: and here it is that the principal discordance in 
popular usage manifests itself, as regards both the fact 
and the nature of the insertion. Some introduce a full 
y before the oo-sound, just as after a palatal or labial 
(even allowing it to coalesce with preceding ¢ and d into 
the ch and 7 sounds, pronouncing duke as juke, and Tues- 
day as chusday) ; others abbreviate it into a slight prefix 
which has the quality of 7 (pz) rather than of 7% (pique) 
or y; and finally, the faction to which I belong exclude 
the prefix entirely in a large class of cases, as follows: 

No initial lingual followed by @ allows the intrusive y, 
whether the syllable be accented or unaccenteéd : thus, the 
uis pure in tube, tuition, Teutonic; in dupe, duration, 
dew; in nude, nutation, new, neuter; in thuriferous, 
thew ; in sue, superb, sewer; in zeugma; in lute, luna- 
tion, lewd, leucoma. ‘The only exceptions I have noticed 
are sure and sugar, in both which the s and the y-prefix. 
have combined, as usual, into the sh-sound: sugar is fur- 
ther anomalous in having a short. % (as in full) ; this 
shortening has obviously been made recently, since the 
lotization was fixed by being absorbed into the sh-sound. 

Again, neither is the w iotized after a lingual in the 
interior of a word, provided the syllable in which it oc- 
curs is accented. Examples are attune, mature, multitu- 
dinous ; endure, tindubitable, produce, adieu; assume, 
pursue, insuperable ; presume ; enthusiasm ; anew, denude ; 


THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. yal 


dllume, convolution, diluvial. I find but a very few excep- 
tions to this rule: namely, the compounds of sure, as as- 
sure, insure ; luxurious, which is a case of the same kind ; 
and inure, for which I can give no reason. 

If, however, the syllable containing the « be imme- 
diately preceded by the accent, its initial consonant (or 
sometimes more than one) is treated as if belonging to 
the accented syllable ; it is, as it were, lifted off the w, 
which then becomes yu, just as if it were initial. In- 
stances are statue, saturate, venture, century (but cen- 
turion with pure wu, as if -too-), fortune (but forturtous 
with -too-) ; modulate, arduous, credulous (but eredulaty 
with -doo-) ; tissue, sensuous ; pleasure, azure; annual 
(but annuity with -noo-), ingenuous (but ingenuity with 
-noo-), penury (but penurious with -noo-) ; volume (but 
voluminous with -loo-), soluble, value, failure.1 Of excep- 
tions to this rule, however, my own usage presents a more 
considerable number: there are, in the first place, cases 
of more difficult combinations: before the w, of which the 
weight is not sufficiently lifted off by the accent to per- 
mit the insertion of the y: such are obdurate, septuagint, 
abluent, affluent and its like, superfluous, capsule ; and 
perhaps indurated, contumacy, contumely, may be reck- 
oned with them; and I have also noted produce, prelude, 
sinew, as apparently mere sporadic irregularities, excesses: 
of a retroactive tendency against iotization after a lin- 
gual. 

In the not numerous class of words which have a see- 
ondary accent only on the syllable before the wu, its effect 
isin general the same with that of the primary accent. 
Thus, the y-sound is inserted in adulation, education, 
denudation, mensuration, accentuation, attenuation, act- 
uality, casuistical, manufactory, amanuensis. Here also 


1It should be noticed here that with ¢t,d, s, and z the y-sound becomes 
blended, transforming them respectively into the ch, 7, sh, and zh-sounds: see 
. the discussion of these sounds below. is 


222 THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 


there are a few exceptions: I have noted only intuition 
Clike intuitive) and deglutition; they are analogous with 
those mentioned under the preceding rule. 

But finally, when the principal accent does not imme- 
diately precede, but is separated by an intervening sylla- 
ble from that in which the w occurs, the latter getting 
itself a certain degree of secondary stress, there is some 
variety of treatment. Generally, the wis kept pure, as 
in a syllable with primary accent; it is thus with the 
considerable classes of words ending in -tude, -tute, -lude, 
-lute, etc.: as solitude, institute, interlude, dissolute, and 
their like; it is thus also with avenue, retinue, residue, 
(but residual with -yu-), with mameluke, demilune, invo- 
lucre, pentateuch, hypothenuse: in all such words the u 
in my mouth is free from all mixture witha y. But the 
ending ture forms a general exception, always admitting 
the iotization: thus, furniture, investiture, ligature, and 
so on (of course, in agriculture, where the secondary ac- 
cent precedes the u-syllable) ; although I think we some- 
times hear the pronunciation -toor in such words. 

With those who follow the method of pronunciation 
thus explained, this peculiar modification of the u-sound 
(into the question of the origin and age of which I must 
forbear here to enter) introduces no additional element 
into the English spoken alphabet: whatever is not pure 
w (00) is yu, to be reckoned as divisible into y and @. 

We come next to a quite peculiar pair of vowels, short 
and long: namely, the “short uw” of but, son, flood, 
double, and the w of burn. They are more nearly akin 
with the open a of far than with any other of our vowels : 
that is to say, whereas in the palatal and labial series, 
which we have been considering, there is a distinct ap- 
proximation of the mouth-organs at certain definable 
points, in these two there is rather a general closure of 
the aperture of the mouth, along the whole line of the 
tongue. Ina, the organs are expanded, to give full and 


THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 223 


clear exit to the sound ; in these, they are left in the way, 
to dim the tone; they are quiescent instead of active ; 
the product is the pure intonated breathing, the grunt or 
murmur. It is, then, with much propriety, often named 
the “ neutral vowel.” It appears in many languages as 
results of the de-articulation, as we may call it, of other 
more positive utterances: thus, in most of modern India, 
the old a, when short, has sunk to this sound, becoming 
what the Sanskrit grammarians call the ‘“ covered up 
(samorita) a;” in French, the “ mute e,”’ when not ab- 
solutely mute, has the neutral tone; and. the nasal w (in 
un, brun, etc.) and even the ew are very closely related 
to it; in part of Germany, the unaccented final e takes 
the same sound ; the German 6, though not far removed, 
is of different quality and of very different origin, being 
a mixture of the medial palatal position of e with the 
medial labial position of 0. The dimming action of the 
mouth-organs is capable of degrees, like any other artic- 
ulating action, and a series of vowels between the a of 
far and the u of burn must be admitted as theoretically 
possible ; but the only two which we actually use are 
very definite in their character, and as necessary to be 
uttered with exactness as the 7 or u-sounds; and, as 
usual elsewhere, the short w of but is a little opener than 
the long of burn, differing from it as the vowel of full 
from that of fool, as the vowel of sin from that of seen. 
14. The “ short wu” of but, love, flood, touch, as found in 
accented syllables, is a vowel of medial frequency, mak- 
ing a little more than two per cent. of our utterance. Our 
unaccented vowels, however, tend to run into it on such . 
a scale as nearly to treble its actual occurrenee : see below, 
where this tendency will be discussed and illustrated. Its 
most common representative by far is w, whence the name 
by which we are accustomed to call it. The signs o and 
ou are also found in a considerable number of words ; 00 
is much more rare, and any other sporadic only: I have 
noted only the 7 of squirrel (according to the only pro- 


224 THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 


nunciation of that word which I have ever heard in 
America) and the oe of does: which latter, however (as 
mentioned above), I myself, with many others, grew up 
to pronounce naturally with the real short % of full, the 
true and natural abbreviation of the long % of do — like 
says (séz) from say (sé). Lepsius represents the sound 
by an e with a small circle below — thus, e ; in Ellis’s 
‘‘ Paleotype,” it 1s written with a turned "e— thus, a ; 
and, for the sake of convenience, I shall use the latter 
when necessary. 

15. The longer and closer shade of neutral vowel utter- 
ance is found in our language only before an 7, and is the 
indifferent middle sound into which have passed, before 7, 
a number of vowels which, not very long ago, were dis- 
tinguished from one another. Examples are the follow- 
ing (given nearly in the order of frequency of each 
representative letter): urn, fur, murky, disturb; bird, 
dirty, astir, irksome; err, were, fern, determine ; heard, 
learning, search; work, worship, attorney; adjourn, scourge; 
tierce. In all these classes, according to my pronuncia- 
tion and that of the immense majority of those whom I 
hear, there is absolutely no difference in the vowel-sound 
uttered : instances are rare of those who still make a dis- 
tinction among them — almost solely, I believe, by giving 
something of a real e-quality to e and ea. Notwithstand- 
ing its restriction to syllables containing 7, this sound is 
not very much rarer than the one last treated Gin ac- 
cented syllables) ; it forms nearly two per cent. of our 
utterance. I shall represent it, for the sake of analogy 
with its corresponding short vowel, by a turned small cap- 
ital “ — thus, 7. 

The peculiar relation in which our neutral vowels stand 
to the r- will render it necessary to make them the subject 
of further remark when we come to consider the +. 

1 A turned a would be theoretically preferable, considering the kinship of the 


sound designated with a; but a turned italic a is too indistinct in form to be 
available for use. 


A 


THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 225 


We have now to take up the diphthongs, or combina- 
tions of more than one vowel sound within the limits of 
the same syllable. In strictness, our € (they) and 6 
note) are diphthongal, since they do not maintain to the 
end the tone with which they are begun; and much the 
same thing is true, as will be pointed out below, of many 
of our long vowels before an 7; but such cases are suffi- 
ciently different from the true diphthongs to make it not 
only allowable but preferable to regard them rather as 
vowels with a vanishing sound added to them, and to 
treat the diphthongs as a separate class. 

The first two of our three diphthongs— namely, the at 
of aisle, or the “long i”’ of bite, and the ow or ow sound 
of mouth, down —are very obviously and closely akin in 
character. ‘They are not, as it appears to me, so much 
combinations of two distinct sounds, as slides : movements 
of transition from the indifferent openness of a ( far) 
through the whole series of palatal and lingual positions, 
as we have called them, to 2 (pique) and u (rule) respect- 
ively. The mouth-organs do not rest an instant in the 
a-position at their beginning, but use it merely as a start- 
ing-point. This distinguishes our az, for example, from 
the German’s e? or ai: the German dwells long enough 
upon the initial a-sound to give to the ear a distinct ap- 
prehension of a as an element in the combination.! 
Hence the peculiar impression of unity which the sounds 
make. Exceedingly few of those who use them, even with 
attention particularly called to their character, will recog- 
nize them as other than simple. And the transitional 
movement by which they are produced is performed so 
rapidly and easily that they hardly require more than the 
time of a short vowel. 

It is matter of dispute among English phonetists, 
whether the initial position in these diphthongal slides is 


1 That isto say, our sound, if represented by a figure, would be neither 
Gs0a—%,n0r ay) — 1, but.a__ +. 


15 


226 THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 


that of a (far) or that of the neutral vowel (but), and 
some of the best authorities (as Ellis) favor the latter. 
Very probably there is an actual difference of usage in 
different parts of the English-speaking community. ‘The 
fact that, as we have seen, there is in ordinary speaking 
no prolongation of the initial element, makes a satisfac- 
tory determination of the point difficult. For my own 
part, [ am fully persuaded that I begin with the a of far. 
16. The first diphthong, then, is that which we ordi- 
narily call ** long 2,”’ because, by a phonetic change which 
is very peculiar though not without its analogies elsewhere, 
the real long z (pronounced as in pique) of Anglo-Saxon 
and early English has been changed into it. Its usual 
representative is 7, as in mine, desire, design, night ; or y, 
as in type, try, and ie, as in pre, relied; others are only 
sporadic, as eye, buy and guy, and height and sleight. 
These last two are the only English words in which ez has 
had the diphthongal sound ; which, however, is begin- 
ning to be extensively heard in either and neither. What- 
ever actual foundation this last may have in the native 
usage of any part of the English-speaking people, it has 
spread in recent times far beyond that foundation, by a 
kind of reasonless and senseless infection, which can only 
be condemned and ought to be stoutly opposed and put 
down. I have no quarrel with those to whom atther and nat- 
ther are a genuine part of their English dialect, who heard 
the pronunciation in their childhood and grew up to use it 
unconsciously ; but that vastly larger class who origin- 
ally said eether and neether, and have since gone about 
deliberately to change it, ought to realize with shame the 
folly of which they have been guilty, and to reform. 
There is a class of words from the classical languages, of 
which isolate and microscope are perhaps the two most fre- 
quent examples, where common usage wavers between 
the “short” and “long” sounds of the ¢— that is, be- 
tween 7 and az, the lightest and heaviest of vowel utter- 


THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. aA 


ances ; and apparently with a tendency to settle upon ai: 
a regretable tendency, I think, as involving so great a 
distortion of the original and proper sound of the vowel. 
In any such case, where usage still gives us the right to 
make our individual choice, it is well to choose what is 
most in accordance with the habits of other communities 
who use the same word. Germans, French, Italians, 
and all the other nations of Europe, would understand 
our microscope, while maicroscope appears plainly to their 
ears the barbarous distortion which it actually is. 

This diphthong is, of course, most naturally and cor- 
rectly represented by az. It is of more frequent occur- 
rence than many of the simple vowels, forming nearly two 
per cent. of the whole body of our articulations. 

17. The second diphthong is written in English only 
. by ow and ow, as in mouth, doughty, abounding, now, 
brown. It is most accurately written by au. If its first 
element is not a pure a (far), it is, I think, rather the 
slightly labialized @ of what than the neutral a of but, 
with which latter Ellis identifies it. A flattening of the 
initial element into @ ( pan) gives it that disagreeable 
and vulgar sound which the English are wont to regard 
as American, the Americans as Yankee, the New Eng- 
lander as Pennsylvanian or Southern, and so on — every 
locality shoving off the responsibility of it upon some 
other. In point of fact, it is, I imagine, more or less 
current everywhere among vulgar speakers; the most 
marked. illustrations of it that I have ever chanced to hear 
were from persons of English birth. To regard it as in 
any degree characterizing the utterance of educated New 
Englanders is wholly unfounded and unjust. 

Like the ai-diphthong, the aw is for the most part his- 
torically the alteration of a simple long vowel, namely w. 
It is less than half as common in use as az, its proportional 
utterance being only about four fifths of one per cent. 

18. The third diphthong, that in codl, boy, and their 
like, is of a quite different character from the other two ; 


228 THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 


while they are mixtures, it is a mere juxtaposition, a 
union, by abbreviated utterance, of two distinct vowel- 
sounds within the compass of one syllable, the two being 
no more blended with one another than if they consti- 
tuted two separate syllables. Their uncombinability is 
due to their belonging to different series: the first element 
is labial, the ** broad a.’ (4) of all; the second is pala- 
tal, the short 7 of pin; and the former is the longer and 
stronger of the two.!' Their greater separability may be 
shown by comparing loyal with trial, avowal ; in the first, 
we might question whether the utterance is more loz-al 
or lo-yal; in the others, the al is a plain addition to the 
ai and au sounds, which maintain their character unim- 
paired. The 47-diphthong is the rarest of English vowel- 
sounds ; its share is only the eighth part of one per cent. 

These are all the vowel utterances which I should ever’ 
think of distinguishing from one another in my pronun- 
ciation of English, as found in accented syllables.2 That 
they do not vary in quantity in different styles of speak- 
ing, and that some of them do not suffer slight modifi- 
cations of quality in rapid utterance, by an influence 
proceeding from the other sounds in connection with which 
they are uttered, I would by no means venture to main- 
tain; but such modification would be unintended, or con- 
trary to intention, and would disappear if the syllable 
were uttered reflectively and deliberately. 

In unaccented syllables, however, our English vowels 
undergo a change of quality, a reduction to indistinctness 
and neutrality, beyond what is known.in any other culti- 
vated European tongue. No actually new constituents of 
the spoken alphabet, I believe, are produced in this way ; 
none which the ear and mouth acknowledge, and which 
are entitled to notice and separate designation in the 
scale on which the present analysis of English utterance 

1 A graphic representation of the compound would be 4___ =i. 


2 The » and / vowels, occurring in unaccented syllables, will be treated a 
little farther on (Nos. 19 and 20). 


THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 229 


is made: for even if, in rapid speaking, some new inter- 
mediate grades of vowel-sound may be struck, the moment 
we turn our attention upon them they will disappear, the 
sound falling under some one of the categories already 
established, taking on the semblance of one of our com- 
mon longs or shorts. It would cost a whole article, or 
volume, to discuss this subject exhaustively, with full 
illustration; I can here only sketch briefly some of its 
chief outlines. ) 

The general modifying influence is of twofold charac- 
ter: either, in the first place, it consists in shortening 
the quantity and lightening the force of the vowel, cut- 
ting off any vanishing-sound it may have, but not alter- 
ing its quality otherwise than by putting short quality in 
place of long ; or, in the second place, it is a substitution 
of the neutral vowel, the ‘short wu” (a) of but, for the 
proper sound of the vowel affected. To what degree 
either of these effects takes place, and even, within cer- 
tain limits, whether the one or the other of them takes 
place, depends in part upon variable and wholly undefina- 
ble conditions: not only on the dialectic habit of the 
speaker, but also upon his personal habit, amd upon the 
distinctness which he is at the time consciously putting 
into his utterance, the rapidity or deliberateness with 
which he speaks. There is a whole class, too, of shades 
of modification introduced by the educated speaker’s con- 
sciousness of the way his words are spelled, and the more 
or less acknowledged feeling that what is distinguished to 
the eye ought also to be distinguished to the ear: these 
help notably to blur the line to be drawn between dis- 
tinct utterance and orthoépic affectation and pedantry. 

To consider first the reduction to the neutral vowel : 
there are large classes of cases in which it has been so 
thoroughly made, and by so general usage, that the sylla- 
ble no longer has an alternative sound ; to pronounce it 
otherwise than with the u of but would be a simple affec- 


230 THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 


tation. Itis so with syllables coming after the accent and 
containing an a which if fully pronounced would be @ 
(pan), or an o that would be @ (what) : thus, an in woman, 
pagan, etc. ; ant, ance, ancy in distant, errant, in distance, 
hindrance, in infancy, pregnancy ; al in penal, eternal, 
and alty in penalty ; more sporadic cases are husband, 
stomach, etc. ; thus, on in nation, derision, and also, of 
course, in national, in harmony, etc.; om in kingdom, 
bosom ; ol in carol, carolling ; or and ory in prior, honor, 
and priory ; and scattering cases like diamond, bullock. 
The a of ar is treated in the same way, as in templar, 
peculiar, beggar ; and of ary, as in beggary ; also that of 
ard, as in drunkard, forward ; and the o of some when 
ending — thus, handsome — as well as when independent 
word. U becomes neutral in wre, as treasure, nature. 
The vowel e has the neutral quality (like 07 and ar) in 
er, as miller, robber ; in ery, as robbery ; and in the few 
cases of erd, as shepherd. ‘The endings ent, ence, ency 
follow the same rule, as patent, present, presence, decency ; 
and even, I believe, when they stand second from the 
accent, and so have a degree of secondary accent them- 
selves, as in penitent, innocent, penitence, imnocency ; 
though in these last cases some will doubtless hold that 
the é sound should be favored a little in careful utterance. 
But ent when radical preserves its é-sound, as in accent, 
comment. And en, el, et, and most other final syllables 
with e, do the same: thus, linen, chicken, woolen, vowel, 
camel, velvet, secret, carpet ; and boundless, interest, sweet- 
ness, learned, princes, acknowledge, manifest, and so on. 
There are those who in such words as these turn the 
é-sound into 7, saying linin, vowil, princiz, etc.; and even 
some orthoépical authorities countenance it; but I find 
no tendency to the change in my own mouth, and it 
appears to mea thing to be contended against. And 7@ 


1 There are exceptions among words in en, as children, heathen, where the 
but sound prevails. 


THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. Oat 


maintains itself still more sturdily than e, being nowhere 
regularly and confessedly convertible into the neutral 
sound. The decidedly palatal vowels, partly as being less 
akin with the neutral, partly perhaps as being themselves 
very light and easy sounds, offer greater resistance to the 
process of conversion. 

Of final vowels, the a is the only one that passes dis- 
tinctly into a (but): thus, idea, Asia, America. 
_ The cases are very numerous in which, although the 
but sound is allowed and frequent in rapid colloquial ut- 
terance, more deliberate pronunciation retains the more 
distinctive sound. Such are especially the vowels of open 
syllables in the interior of a word: thus, the a of com- 
pany, separate (second syllable), oracle, lovable (though 
it can hardly be said that in any of these cases, least of 
all in the ending -able, the ais ever anything but a ‘ short 
wu”); the o of clamorous, honorable, philosopher (third 
syllable) ; the e of enemy, tolerate, funeral, ceremony ; and 
even the 7 of velocity, credible, indivisibility (fourth and 
sixth syllables, -si- and -li-), originate. The gradual 
diminution of the tendency to conversion in this series, 
dependent on the character of the vowels as already 
pointed out, is very clear ; probably some will refuse to 
acknowledge or sanction the change of 7 at all; but, for 
all that, it is real, and common enough. In the same 
category of admissible but not required conversions belong 
a host of syllables that precede the accent in a word: in- 
stances are above, again, ability, habitual, pavilion ; obey, 
obscure, occasion, confusion, compare, forsake, to-morrow, 
propose : I think we also sometimes treat in the same way 
an é, or even an 2, but only in especially careless utter- 
ance ; and I do not venture to give any examples, lest 
they be cried out against. 

It can hardly be claimed, I suppose, that we ever pro- 
nounce a long vowel with absolute completeness in an 
unaccented syllable, in our natural and unforced utter- 


232 THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 


ance; we rather cut it down into its naturally corre- 
sponding short vowel. Even a real short 6 would have to 
be acknowledged in the medium pronunciation (medial 
between the elaborate 6, vanish and all, and the careless 
a) of obey, opinion, and their like. And the abbreviated 
vowel is liable to be sometimes altered in quality still 
farther, to a neutral utterance. There are classes of 
words, also, in which a shortened é is allowed by the or- 
thoépists to be lightened into z: such are especially the 
words in tain, as mountain, certain, captain : those in age 
and ace, as cabbage, village, palace ; those in ege, as col- 
lege, knowledge ; and so on. Reference has been made 
above to final ness, es, ed, as treated in the same manner. 
To me, this change of € to ~ seems always to be worse 
than easy and familiar; to be slovenly, rather, and un- 
worthy of recognition on the part of the orthoépists. 

Not only unaccented syllables, but unemphatie words, 
are liable to this dimming and changing of quality. The 
article the, as a striking example, is abbreviated to thi 
before a vowel, and before a consonant takes the full but- 
sound; and its colleague a suffers the same reduction. 
From, was, of, are further instances of reduction to the 
neutral vowel in rapid combination with other words ; 
even to, though its d-sound is more persistent, does not 
always escape the same fate.! 

The true method for a pronouncing dictionary of 
English to follow in marking these varieties of utterance 
seems not difficult to establish in theory, although its 
carrying out in detail would be much harder, because 


1 Ellis treats this subject of unaccented syllables and unemphatic words with 
greater fullness, on pp. 1161-1167 of his great work. I find my utterance ac- 
cordant with his on almost every point; but I think American usage goes farther 
than English in letting the secondary accent, after the primary, exercise a con- 
serving influence upon the vowel of the syllable : for example, upon the o of 
territory, preparatory, testimony ; the a of literary, secondary, circumstance ; 
and so on. The last word, which Ellis gives somewhere as having the same 
vowel-sound in every syllable, is to me, even in rapid utterance, pronounced 
with three different vowels, a (hurt), a (but), and @ ( pan). 


THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 233 


the various classes distinguished actually pass into one 
another, across undefinable boundaries. Those vowels 
which have absolutely and irrecoverably passed over into 
the neutral sound of but, and those which more persist- 
ently maintain their quality, with abbreviation and light- 
ening only, might be plainly enough indicated by appro- 
priate diacritical marks ; and then a separate mark would 
be required for those which are allowed to be reduced to 
neutrality in fluent utterance; and it might even be two- 
fold, so as to point out the varying degree of permissibil- 
ity, as between the more usual and the rarer cases. No 
existing dictionary, that. I know of, gives the learner of 
the language any valuable help with regard to the vary- 
ing quality of unaccented vowels. 

I have estimated that the occurrence of the short neu- 
tral sound (4ut) in the way of substitution for vowels 
which an elaborate pronunciation would give with dis- 
tinctness is more frequent than its independent occur- 
rence, or about three and one half per cent. 

We have to note finally, in connection with this sub- 
ject, that in a considerable class of unaccented syllables 
containing an 7 or l, the vowel, instead of being merely 
weakened or neutralized, is omitted entirely, the n or / 
remaining as ‘‘ vowel” of the syllable: so in reckon, but- 
ton, liken, fatten, deaden, chasten, venison, seven, often ; 
so in tackle, bungle, apple, able, little, handle, bustle, evil. 
This arises from the peculiar character of the two sounds, 
standing, as they do (as elsewhere explained, in this and 
the following article), on the border-line between conso- 
nant and vowel, and so capable of being put to use with 
either value. Though among the rarest sounds in our 
spoken alphabet, they are both more frequent than the 
oi-diphthong ; in ten thousand sounds, I have found the 
J-vowel thirty-five times and the n-vowel sixteen times. 
It is necessary, then, to complete our scheme of English 
yowel-sounds by adding these two. 


934 THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 


19. The /-vowel of tackle, etc., is almost always written 
le, with the silent vowel following it. And when a syl- 
lable is added, as in bungler, ablest, bundling, the 1 en- 
tirely loses its vocalic character, and makes no intermedi- 
ate syllable. There are a few words in which written el 
has confessedly the same character —for example, hazel, 
and (as it seems to me) morsel and parcel ; and a much 
larger class in which a careless pronunciation gives / 
only, while the authorities still properly require é7: such 
are angel, rebel, model, quarrel, level, etc. ‘The same ab- 
breviating tendency is contended against in a few 7, al, 
and ol words, as civil, medal, idol: in evil and devil, how- 
ever, the corruption has established itself beyond remedy, 
as also perhaps (though I think not) in metal. 

20. The n-vowel of reckon, etc., has the silent vowel 
written before it, and there are few if any words in 
which this is not sometimes restored in deliberate pronun- 
ciation. And when a formative syllable is added, as in 
reckoner, gluttony, fattening, the orthoépists differ in 
opinion as to whether the n should be left as sole vowel 
of the intermediate syllable, or whether the preceding 
vowel should also be uttered, with neutral sound. In 
my view, both ways are proper, each in its own style of 
utterance. 

We come now to consider the consonants, the closer 
articulations of the alphabetic system. Indeed, we have 
already touched upon the consonantal domain, in treating 
of the last pair of vowels, which are more usually conso- 
nantal sounds, though capable, under special cireum- 
stances, of doing duty as vowels also. And first among 
them we will take up 7. 

21. The 7 is a sound which is formed between the tip 
of the tongue and the upper part or roof of the mouth, | 
the approach of the two organs not being so close as to 
produce a rubbing or buzzing sound — which, if pro- 
duced, would be a z or zh, instead of 7. It may be thus 


THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 235 


formed along the whole line of the roof of the mouth, 
from close behind the front teeth to as far back as the tip 
of the tongue can be turned; varying somewhat in its 
coloring as it is transferred backward or forward, but 
everywhere unmistakably an 7. At its foremost point of 
production, with the tongue stretched directly forward 
and nearly reaching the front teeth, it can be trilled or 
vibrated: that is to say, the tip of the tongue can be 
made to swing rapidly up and down, alternately narrow- 
ing (or closing) and widening the passage ; if the tongue 
be retracted, or its tip turned upward, this action 1s 1m- 
possible. As an actual fact, trilling- accompanies the 
pronunciation of the 7 in most of the languages which 
possess that letter; insomuch that it is common among 
phonetists to define 7 as a trill or vibration of the tip of 
the tongue. Whether it be proper or not to do so is in 
great part a verbal question merely: to me, I must con- 
fess, the place of the organs seems to be the main charac- 
teristic of the sound, and the vibration one of subordinate 
or secondary value. If only that is an r which possesses 
vibration, the question arises.what we shall call our ordi- 
nary English 7; for this is certainly not trilled. We 
shall, I am sure, do best to call it still an 7, though a 
smooth or untrilled 7, We pronounce it (if I may judge 
by comparing the action in my own mouth with what I 
hear from my neighbors’ mouths) with the tip of the 
tongue reverted into the dome of the mouth, where vi- 
bration is impossible. That is to say, we the great body 
of English speakers, and in our ordinary utterance ; for, 
on the one hand, there are doubtless localities where the 
letter is still trilled as in the olden time (the Irish have 
retained this, among other characteristics of a more 
ancient style of utterance); and, on the other hand, 
there are individuals among us who, from whatever cause, 
regularly give the trill; while any of us may, in an effort 
at peculiarly distinct, emphatic, or orotund utterance, at 
times do the same thing, 


236 THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 


It is very common among English orthoépists to dis- 
tinguish in English speech a “rough 7” and a “ smooth 
7, the former being that which is heard before a vowel, - 
the latter when no vowel follows, when the 7 is either 
final or has a consonant after it. It does not seem to 
me, however, that such a distinction can be maintained ; 
as regards my own pronunciation, at any rate, it is ut- 
terly destitute of foundation: I have never trilled an 7 
_ except by a conscious effort or in connection with an at- 
tempt at unusual distinctness of articulation; nor have I 
any double method of utterance of the letter; to me the 
variation is not between rough and smooth, but between 
smooth and nothing. In my natural and unregenerate 
state, namely, before I had begun to school my utterance 
to conformity with orthographical and orthoépical rule, I 
never pronounced at all an 7 that was not followed by a 
vowel; I fear that I hardly do so now except when I am 
thinking of it. I can confess and assert this in the most 
confident manner, because my attention was directed to. 
the subject before I had any theories as to what was or 
what should be. And I have taught French and Ger- 
man pronunciation to pupils enough, from all parts of the 
country, to be convinced that this absence of utterance, 
and of trill when uttered, is a very general characteristic 
of American pronunciation. As to that of England, it is 
enough to note that Mr. Ellis makes the same acknowl- 
edgment, in the most explicit manner, respecting his 
English. It is, indeed, natural that the silencing of the 
yr, under circumstances less favorable to its utterance, 
should form part of that same process of general weaken- 
ing which has robbed it elsewhere of its vibration. 

If the r be pronounced wherever it is written, 1t is, ac- 
cording to my reckoning, the most common of English 
sounds, reaching a frequency of nearly seven and a half 
per cent.; but the cases in which it is followed by a 
vowel are only just about one half of that number, 


THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. wat 


Between r and the neutral vowel-sound there exists a 
peculiar relation, which must not be passed without notice. 
I am by no means confident that I fully understand its 
physical grounds; but I have been accustomed to explain 
it to myself somewhat in this way. The r isa letter of 
unusually laborious production, as requiring some retrac- 
tion of the tongue with a reversion of its tip into the 
dome of the palate. The tongue-position from which its 
utterance is most readily reached is that inactive one 
which gives the neutral vowels. These last, then, lie as 
natural intermediates between any other vowel and r. 
The voice is perfectly able, to be sure, to make the transi- 
tion so rapidly that no intermediate stage is audible; and 
it does so after a short vowel; but in the greater deliber- 
ateness of a long vowel or diphthong it gives the transi- 
tional sound a chance to appear. At any rate, in the 
whole classes of words like care, fear, sore, cure, fire, sour, 
a neutral vowel (7) follows the other vowel-sound in a 
manner which is perfectly palpable to the ear; it is far 
more noticeable than, for example, the 7 and @ vanish of 
the common é (they) and 6, and almost or quite as plain 
as the final element of the oz-diphthong. If the same in- 
sertion is to be theoretically recognized as made after the 
other two long vowels, a and 4 (in far and war), it 1s at 
any rate wholly inconspicuous, a virtually inaudible glide. 
In that style of pronunciation, then, in which (as ex- 
plained just above) the r has come to be not uttered at 
all, the transition-sound is left as its substitute, and is 
alone heard. Care, for example, becomes kez, instead of 
kegr, and cared becomes kezd; and so with the rest ; 
while caring has both the transition-sound and the smooth 
or untrilled 7, and is kegring. 

With this phenomenon stands in evident connection 
the substitution of the long neutral vowel for a more 
original sound in such words as worth, mirth, earth, curse, 
scourge, tierce (see above, No. 15, p. 224); the formerly 


238 THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 


distinct vowel has been overpowered and replaced by the 
transitional sound at first developed after it. Wherever 
the r is found, it tends to give the preceding vowel a 
neutral color; and association with it helps to convert the 
vowels of unaccented syllables to the neutral a. 

It is because of its tendency to develop the neutral — 
vowel, and then itself to disappear, in English pronunci- 
ation, that the r never becomes in English (as it does in 
- various other languages, more fully than any other con- 
sonantal sound) the actual vowel of a syllable, like 7 and 
m. In situations where these two would be left alone, 
with vocalic office, 7 is replaced by a brief a (but); or, if 
itself pronounced, it has such a vowel prefixed: aere, for 
example, is éka or else ékar. There is, however, one word 
in the language, where, according to a common (and, as 
it seems to me, the best) pronunciation, 7 is the vowel of 
an accented syllable ; it is pretty (the bgoks mostly pre- 
scribe priti ; one hears also préti and piiti). 

22. The nearest relative of the ris the 7. In the lat- 
ter the tongue touches the roof of the mouth, either by 
its tip or its upper surface, while there is a passage left 
open at the sides of the tongue, through which the sonant 
breath finds free exit. Here, again, the tongue may take 
any position along the roof of the mouth, just as in mak- 
ing”; and even, as is not the case with 7, the flat of the 
tongue, instead of its tip, may be the part used: the dif- 
ferent lU’s thus produced are of more diverse quality than 
the r’s, and some of them are used in other languages as 
regular members of the alphabet, separaté from the com- 
mon 7: so,the palatal 7, or 2 mowillé, of the French, made 
with the flat of the tongue against the roof of the mouth, 
nearly in the y-position ; and the “ cerebral” 7 of the 
Vedic Sanskrit, with the tip well retracted into the dome 
of the palate. Our own / probably enough varies a lit- 
tle in place, under the influence of the consonants in 
connection with which it appears; when unconstrained, 


THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 239 


the tip of the tongue with me is pretty close behind the 
upper front teeth, considerably farther forward than in 
uttering 7. I have never been able to discover, in my 
own mouth or in that of others, the slightest vestige of 
that vibratory or trilling quality which is claimed as its 
characteristic by some phonetists. Nor does it seem to 
me a matter of importance whether the vocal breath 
streams out on both sides of the tongue or only on one 
side ; and, in the latter case, whether on the right side or 
the left: my own practice appears to vary between the 
three methods. 

The 7 is a common sound in English, making nearly 
four per cent. of our utterance. Its (not frequent) use as 
a vowel has been already considered. It is hardly neces- 
sary to add that between the vocalic and the consonantal 
J there is not the slightest shade of difference in physical 
character, in the articulating position and mode of utter- 
ance; what difference there is consists only in quantity 
and stress. 

In r and 7 we have two consonants which verge closely 
upon the character of vowels, and are in various lan- 
guages sometimes used as vowels. In 7% (pique) and @ 
(fool), on the other hand, we have vowels of so close po- 
sition that they verge upon the consonants. If we fix 
the organs to say 7, and then, instead of prolonging the 
sound, utter it with utmost brevity before another vowel- 
sound, as a, hardly making the position more than a 
starting-point from which to reach the latter, we shall 
have an.unmistakable and perfect ya. An @ if treated 
in like manner will give us a wa. The same effect may 
in fact be given, only with a little less distinctness, by 
transition from the % and @ ( full) positions — nay, recog- 
nizably even from the e (they) and o positions. On the 
other hand, the organs may be even more closed for y and 
w than for the ordinary utterance of 7 and @, so as almost 
to give an audible frication, a rubbing or buzzing sound, 


240 THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 


at the place of closure ; and it thus becomes possible to 
produce the semivowel effect even when or @ follows, as 
in the pronunciation of ye and woo. I say, almost a frica- 
tion, because I think it does not quite reach that charac- 
ter ; a prolongation of the position will still yield a (tur- 
bid) ¢ or uw sound, one far more vocalic than fricative. 
Moreover, I am not at all sure that, in order. to make the 
y and w sounds distinct in such combinations, I do not 
‘open the closure first upon the short vowel (which is, as 
already explained, an opener utterance than the long), 
then immediately shutting it again to the long: thus 
really saying yii, wii. In the ordinary processes of rapid 
utterance, I believe that we use, according to cireum- 
stances, different degrees of closure; and that a true and 
unexceptionable description of these sounds is that they 
are 7 and & sounds abbreviated, reduced to consonantal 
value by being used as mere starting-points from which 
to reach the vowel that follows. Any dwelling upon them 
would give them a vocalic effect, and make them diph- 
thongize with the succeeding vowel, or form a separate 
prefixed syllable. And even in their closest possible 
shape, they are not more different from 7 and-@ than 
these are from i and % Here, then, as well as in the 7 
and J sounds, the vowel and consonant systems inoscu- 
late ; and there is good and sufficient reason for classing 
the four sounds together, and calling them ‘‘ semivowels.” 
To put 7 and 7 together with n and m, as “ liquids,” is a 
far more objectionable classification ; the » and m are too 
peculiar in character and connections to admit such treat- 
ment. 

23. The y-sound is shared by the English with many 
languages, probably even with the majority. It is far 
from being a frequent sound with us; even including the 
cases in which, as explained above (under @, No. 13), it 
occurs as first element of the “long wu,” I have found it to 
average only two thirds of one per cent. 


THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 244 


24. With the w-sound the case is quite different ; the 
English is the only modern European literary language 
which has retained it as a full member of the alphabet ; in 
the others; it has generally passed into a v, which is a 
sound of a very different class, a sonant fricative, a spirant 
(see below, No. 37). One consequence of this has been 
that the existence of such a sound as w has been almost 
ignored by continental European philologists, who have 
treated v instead as a semivowel — about as gross a pho- 
‘netic blunder as it is possible to commit. 

The w is a very much more common sound than y in 
English utterance, its percentage rising to two and one 
third. | 

It will be advisable, for convenience of exposition of 
the systematic relations of sounds, to pass next to the 
other extremity of the alphabetic system, and consider, 
the mutes. 

We began our scheme, it will be remembered, with the 
openest and freest of human utterances, the a (far), in 
which no hindrance is placed by throat or mouth in the 
way of the expulsion of intonated breath through the 
larynx. At the farthest remove from this is a series of 
articulations in which the interference of the mouth-or- 
gans with the flow of breath is carried so far as to stop 
that flow altogether, by producing a complete closure of 
the mouth. Such articulations are, then, properly enough 
called ‘*mutes;” also contact-letters, stops, checks. In 
our language (as likewise in most other tongues) there 
are three such mutes, the closure being made at three dif- 
ferent points in the mouth: either at the lips, or between 
the tip of the tongue and the fore part of the palate, or 
between the back part of the tongue and the back palate: 
they are, respectively, p, ¢, and &. An indefinite number 
of different mute contacts is capable of being formed by 
the various mouth-organs, in various positions ; and some 


languages make use of four, or five, or even more; but 
16 


242 THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 


these three, which we may call the labial, the lingual, and 
the palatal contacts, are the only ones found to occur in 
the great majority of human dialects. The name of 
mute is appropriate to them, inasmuch as, so long as the 
contact lasts, there is absolute silence; it is only as the 
contact is broken that its effect upon the following 
opener utterance shows what it has been. The products 
_are also sometimes, and very suitably, styled “ explo- 
sives ;” the explosion, or sudden breach of contact, is their ~ 
characteristic. For the making of the contact, by shut- 
ting off a preceding vowel —ap, at, ak —is an utter- 
ance of the mute so much less distinct’ and audible as 
fairly to be called imperfect; and we are accordingly ac- 
customed, when a mute comes at the end of a sentence, 
or before a pause, to break the contact again, with a little 
expulsion of mere breath, in order to make clear the 
nature of the final: we may represent it by ap, at, ak’. 
Some phonetists claim that to make a whole p, for exam- 
ple, both a closure and a breach are required — thus, apa 
— either ap or pa being only a half or incomplete utter- 
ance ; others, again, claim that ap is complete, and pa is 
complete, and so that apa is really double, and ought (I 
infer) to be written appa, a single mute between vowels 
being an impossibility : but I see no sufficient ground for 
either opinion. 

It is, again, asserted by some (notably by Lepsius) 
that our usual p, t, & are not simple mutes, but rather 
aspirates — that is to say, that a bit of breath, a brief h, 
is slipped out between the breach of mute contact and the 
beginning of a following vowel or other more open sound. 
This also I should confidently deny, so far as our ordinary 
pronunciation is concerned ; the relaxation of the contact 
and the beginning of the following sound are so closely 
fitted together, made so truly simultaneous, that nothing 
perceptible comes between them. If, indeed, we make 
the breach with labored energy, with violence, the case 


THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 243 


appears to be different ; I myself, at any rate, in such an 
utterance, cannot help the escape of a little puff of flatus 
between the mute and the vowel—as is shown most 
clearly by holding the palm of the hand a little way in 
front of the mouth during the utterance. 

25. The labial surd mute, p, is plainly enough produced 
by the closure of the two lips; and no difference in the 
usage of individuals or of peoples has, so far as I know, 
been pointed out as regards the nature of the contact. It 
is the least common sound of its class in English, falling 
short of one and three quarters per cent. 

26. As to the precise place of the contact by which is 
formed the lingual mute, ¢, the case is different ; and so, as 
we shall see later, as to that of the k Both these two 
are generated between the tongue and the roof of the 
mouth ; but there is a considerable range of choice in the 
precise part of either organ that shall be used. Speaking 
most generally, the ¢-position is farther forward than the 
k-position. And it should be carefully noted here, as a 
principle which we shall have occasion more than once 
hereafter to apply, that the point on the roof of the 
mouth at which a mute or fricative is produced is decid- 
edly more essentially distinctive than the part of the 
tongue with which it is produced. For instance, one 
may turn the tongue so far back as with the reverted tip 
of it (against the soft palate) to utter an unmistakable k; | 
and, on the other hand, one may thrust the tongue half- 
way out of the mouth, and yet make a perfectly clear ¢ 
by a contact behind the teeth. No small variety, then, 
especially of ¢’s, is capable of being produced, each clearly 
a t, but distinguishable from all the rest by a slight differ- 
ence of quality. And a considerable number of them are 
actually produced, either in the same or in different lan- 
guages. If the tip of the tongue be laid full against the 
backside of the upper front teeth, perhaps even reach- 
ing below their points, the t has a decided tinge of the 


244 THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 


th-sound (in thin) ; the difference being that in the ¢ the 
determining contact is still made on the gums behind the 
teeth, and not upon the teeth themselves ; in the latter 
situation a complete closure is not possible, and only the 
fricative th could result. This seems, according to the 
descriptions given, to be the character of the modern 
Hindu “ dental” ¢. Again, if the tip of the tongue be 
turned up into the roof of the mouth, a ¢ of different tone 
(we might describe it as hollower) is produced ; and this 
is the Hindu “ cerebral,” or ** cacuminal,” or “ lingual ” ¢. 
I should infer from Mr. Ellis’s latest descriptions (less 
certainly from Mr. Bell’s figure) that a reverted or cacu- 
minal character belongs to the English pronunciation of 
t to a degree which I had not thought of. My own ¢ is 
made directly behind the teeth, with the tip of the tongue 
not in the least turned up, but laid forward, and at least 
erazing the teeth, if it does not fairly touch them; even 
in pronouncing ¢r, I find in my mouth no assimilation of 
the ¢ to the r in respect to position, but a distinct slipping 
of the tongue backward from the one to the other. 

Inasmuch, then, as the teeth have no real part in the 
production of a ¢, I think the name “ dental” as applied 
to that letter and its immediate relatives a misnomer, and 
would call the contact in general a “ lingual” one, reserv- 
ing the names “ dental,” “ palatal,” ‘* cacuminal,” and so 
on, for characterizing its special varieties. The ¢ which I 
utter deserves none of these names, but, as being made 
upon the gums of the upper front teeth, it might be 
denominated (by a term which has sometimes been used 
for such purpose) a “ gingival” ¢. 

The ¢ is third in frequency among all the sounds of our 
alphabet, rising nearly to six per cent. 

27. The third surd mute, the 4, is formed, as already 
stated, by a contact of the back part of the tongue with 
the palate: at what precise point on the latter is much 
more difficult to determine than in the case of the ¢; nor 


THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 245 


is the matter one of much consequence — especially, as 
there is good reason for holding that the place varies 
somewhat, according to the letter in connection with 
which the & is uttered; the & of ki, for example, being 
farther forward than that of ka, or ko, or ku (coo). The 
Semitic languages (and something like it is now claimed 
for the early Indo-European) had a double k, one deeper 
and more emphatic than the other — deeper than any- 
thing that we are in the habit of producing, though not 
very hard for us to imitate. It would be a sufficient 
definition to say that our & is produced upon the roof of 
the mouth either at or behind the junction of the hard 
and soft palate. For this reason, we may best call it 
“palatal ;”’ the name “ guttural’ is not free from grave 
objection. 

Our f is a little more frequent of utterance than our p, 
its percentage being two and one sixth. We shall find 
through the whole consonantal system that the articula- 
tions formed by the back of the tongue and ‘by the lips, 
added together, are less than half as frequent as those 
made by the tip or front of the tongue. 

I have called these three mutes ‘“ surds,’”’ by a name 
which is now quite widely used, and which is intended to 
describe them as produced without any tone, any sono- 
rous vibration of the vocal cords. Other terms signifying 
the same thing are atonic, aphthongal, non-vocal, uninto- 
nated, and so on, any one of which is free from serious 
objection, if ‘surd”’ (which is offensive to some) be re- 
jected. To call them, however, “ hard,” or “ sharp,” or 
“strong,” or by any other such scientifically inaccurate 
and merely fanciful or blundering title, is altogether to 
be condemned. 

By the same positions of the mouth-organs as those al- 
ready described are produced, with added action of the 
throat, three other members of the alphabet, namely 4, 
d, g, which are also ordinarily called ‘‘ mutes,” although 


246 THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 


not in the same measure entigled to bear the name. In 
them, there is actual production of sound in the larynx, 
the utterance of an audible buzz, as it were, while the 
mute contact is still maintained. Inasmuch, now, as this 
buzz implies the passage of a column of air through the 
glottis, setting in vibration the vocal cords on its way, 
some persons have found it very hard to understand its 
_ possibility, and have been led to deny that this is the 
true account of the difference between, for example, a 0d 
and p. But the explanation is perfectly easy. The cav- 
ity of the closed mouth acts for a time as a receiving-box, 
into which is forced a current of air until it is full and 
can receive no more. Any one may convince himself of 
this by trying to prolong a0}; the sound in the throat 
continues audible for a while, the cheeks gradually puff- 
ing out by distention of the breath foreed upward, till at 
last they are stretched to their utmost, and then the 
sound ceases; one can, however, then ‘‘ swallow” the 
breath, or return it to the lungs, and repeat the process ; 
and so on, over and over, as long as one can bear it with- 
out taking a new breath. I find that I can prolong the 
tone with the d-position more than two seconds, with the 
d-position less than two, with the g-position hardly one, 
the difference depending, of course, on the greater or less 
extent of the available mouth-cavity; but any one of 
them is time enough for the utterance of a whole series 
of consonants. : 

In ba, therefore, as distinguished from pa, the expul- 
sion of intonated breath and production of sound begins 
before the unclosure of the lips, instead of simultaneously 
with the unclosure; in ab, it continues in like manner 
after the closure is made; in aba, there is no interruption 
of the continuity of sound, no instant of silence, as in 
apa. And this is the sole characteristic distinction of 
the two letters. We should call 6, then, as compared 
with the surd p, a “sonant ” (or tonic, phthongal, vocal, 


THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 247 


intonated) mute. It is impossible for me to discover on 
what foundation, even of fancied analogy, reposes the 
name of ‘flat,’ which is used by some. It is easier to 
see on what misapprehension the much more common 
“‘ soft’ is founded. By the closing of the vocal cords, in 
order to the production of sonant utterance, the column 
of expelled air is, of course, narrowed ; there is, in a cer- 
tain sense, a thinner current waiting for the breach of 
mute contact behind a 6 than behinda p. Yet, after all, 
only in a certain sense ; for as the vocal cords are brought 
together for the production of a vowel at the very in- 
stant the contact is broken (unless, indeed, an aspirate, a 
p, is uttered, instead of a simple surd, a p), there is no 
“harder” or “stronger” expenditure of breath in the 
surd letter than in the sonant; one may even say, not so 
much expenditure ; for in 0 the loss of breath to the lungs 
by expulsion beyond the glottis begins before the breach 
of contact ; in p, only at the breach of contact. 

So far as I can see, there is no ground whatever on 
which the use of the terms “strong” or “hard,” and 
“soft ” or ‘ weak,’ as applied respectively to surd and 
sonant letters, can be successfully defended. They began 
in ignorance, and are continued in heedless imitation or 
in misapprehension. ‘They have had, and still have, their 
stronghold in the usage of Germans; among whom, m 
general, the distinctions of surd and sonant are less ob- 
served and less understood than elsewhere. The persist- 
ency with which even the greatest German philologists 
cling to them, and make them the foundation of the pho- 
netic doctrine that, for example, the alteration of p to 6 
is a process of weakening, and that from 6 to p a process 
of strengthening, is something truly wonderful. A weak- 
ening of the utterance of a p has not, that I can discover, 
the slightest tendency to make a 6 of it; nor vice versd ; 
for the 6 contains an element which the p does not, and 
one which may be intensified indefinitely without being 


248 THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 


lost, but rather the contrary. Either a p or a b may be 
struck with unusual energy, even violence, and, again, 
dropped from the lips with the faintest practicable effort, 
without in either case losing a jot of its distinctive char- 
acter.! 

The question of what. distinguishes a sonant letter 
from a surd in whispering, when no real sonant utterance 
at all is produced, is one of no small difficulty, and much » 
controverted. It is not easy to determine, in the first 
place, how far the distinction is actually made to the ear, 
and how far its apprehension is merely subjective, the 
hearer understanding by the connection which sound is 
really intended; nor, in the second place, of what nature 
the distinctions actually made are. But if the vowels, 
which in our common utterance are essentially sonant let- 
ters, can be imitated in whispering by an imperfect res- 
onance which falls short of true sonancy, there is clearly 
no difficulty in supposing that similar means may supply 
the omitted element in sonant consonants also. It seems 
to me that the surd mutes are distinguished from the so- 
nant by being slightly aspirated. But I have not studied 
the subject enough to arrive at conclusions worth setting 
down here; and I refer to it only for the purpose of 
pointing out that it involves no objection against the 
explanation of the distinction between surd and sonant 
which has been given above. 

These sonants, as has been already remarked, have 
not so good a title as their surd correlatives to the name 
of ** mutes.” Nor can it be fairly said that the breach of 
contact constitutes their sole substance; for the tone 
which they contain is distinctive enough to be recognized 
by the ear, even before the breach. This tone also makes 
them more clearly audible at the end of a word than the 
surds, even without the subsequent breach with flatus — 


1 Except, indeed, so far as, in the manner pointed out above, a violent p 
tends to become aspirated, turning to p*. 


THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 249 


which, however, I think we are in the habit of giving 
aiter a sonant final as well as after a surd. Yet no one, 
probably, will question that the breach of contact or ex- 
plosion is an essential element of their character, and 
that they are therefore of one class with the surds. 

28. The 6-sound, then, is the sonant counterpart of the 
p, identical with it in position of the mouth-organs, dif- 
fering only in the laryngal action. It is very slightly 
less frequent than p, amounting to nearly one and two 
thirds per cent. 

29. In the same manner, the d corresponds with the ¢ 
in everything but the element of sonancy, and occurs 
somewhat less often, though still forming nearly five per 
cent. of our utterance. 

50. ‘The g, however, the intonated /, is not much more 
than a third as common as its surd correspondent, making 
only about three quarters of one per cent. 

There is yet another class of three sounds, uttered 
in the same three positions which have been already de- 
scribed, and with.sonant or intonated expulsion of breath, 
like 6, g, and d, but differing from them by the unclosure 
of the nasal passages. The velwm palati, ‘veil of the 
palate,’ which in most of our speaking is pressed up 
against the exit from the pharynx into the nose, forcing 
the breath to find its way out into or through the mouth, 
is for these three utterances dropped, leaving the breath 
free exit through the nostrils. ‘Thus are produced the 
*‘ nasals,” m, 2, and ng (as in singing).1 In virtue of 
their mode of formation, they are of a curiously mixed 
character : on the one hand, as implying complete closure 
of the mouth-organs, they are ‘ mutes,” or contact let- 


1 It is awkward to have to use digraphs for the representation of unitary 
sounds, and if my object were alphabetic rather than phonetic, to suggest a 
system of signs for English sounds rather than to analyze and describe the 
sounds themselves, I should carefully avoid such. As the case stands, the 
habits and preferences of the general English reader and the convenience of 
the printer forbid the use of more carefully adapted signs. Lepsius represents 
the sound in question by 7; Ellis, in his Palwotype, by q.- 


250 THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 


ters, explosives; on the other hand, as involving freedom 
of exit through the nose to the expelled column of air, 
they are even of a vocalic character, open, sonorous, in- 
definitely continuable, capable of being sung to—as 
indeed, our “ humming” is, at least usually, the singing 
of a continuous m. It has, then, naturally enough, been 
made a matter of dispute whether the breach of mute 
contact is an essential element in the utterance of the 
-nasals, whether they are or are not properly explosives. 
There is good reason to be brought forward on both sides. 
Every one must acknowledge at least as much as this, 
that in actual fact the explosion is there, that an m with- 
out either an introductory closure or a succeeding unclos- 
ure is not to be found, and that hence to withdraw that 
element from the utterance would make it less than what 
it now is, and so far imperfect. But the importance of 
the explosive element is a matter of degree, of more and 
of less, in different classes of sounds: in p it is all; in 6 
it is still much, but not all; and in m it is reduced, I 
think, to quite subordinate value. Even 7 and J (espe- 
cially the latter), even the fricatives, have a partial clos- 
ure, the making and unmaking of which are appreciable, 
though no one would think of regarding them as to be 
given weight in a description of those sounds. MM, n, and 
ng are by no means indefinite nasal utterances to which 
certain explosions give definite character; they are as 
distinct and recognizable as the vowels, even, in their - 
continuable murmur, without aid from the explosion ; and 
if it were possible to put the murmur and the following 
vowel directly side by side, skipping the intervening ele- 
ment, we should not feel the lack of anything —any 
more than we now recognize anything as wanting to the 
character of the nasal when we say imp, or ant, or ink. 
31. The m-sound, then, is a 6 to which the element of 
nasal resonance has been added, an element which so 
predominates in its character as to make of it a “ reso- 


THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 251 


nant” (as Briicke appropriately enough calls it) rather 
than a mute. It is a pretty frequent sound, forming 
more than three per cent. of our utterance. ‘That we do 
not use it as a vowel, like the m (except in the vulgar- 
ism yes’m, for ‘yes, ma’am’’), is not owing to anything 
inherent in the character of the sound, but to historical 
causes: we have not learned to slight and omit the vowel 
in any of our rare final unaccented syllables ending in m. 
If we were to treat bosom and besom and seldom and 
custom as we treat lessen and reckon, we should have 
an m-vowel; indeed, I have litle doubt that slovenly 
speakers sometimes pronounce bosom as bi-zm. But the 
vulgar tendency is in general rather the other way, toward 
turning even elm into él-am. 

32. The n-sound is related to d as m to 6. Of its oc- 
casional conversion to vowel value we have already taken 
sufficient notice (above, No. 20). Its physical character 
is precisely the same, whether it be consonant or vowel ; 
no element save time and stress is added or subtracted to 
make the one out of the other. It is by far the most 
common of the nasals; and, indeed, the most common 
(with the equivocal exception of the 7) of all our articu- 
lations, forming fully six and three quarters per cent. of » 
our average utterance. 

33. Very different, in this respect, is the ng-sound (of 
singing), which is related to g precisely as n to d and as 
m to 6, and is a not less simple and indivisible sound than 
either of them. It rises to an average of only about 
three quarters of one percent. It is never found begin- 
ning a syllable, but always either precedes a g or &, or is the 
remnant of a group in which a g was formerly pronounced 
after it — whence the use of ng to represent it. It has 
a similar subordinate value in all the languages of our 
kindred ; as, indeed, in nearly all the languages of the 
earth. Almost everywhere, m and 7 are the only nasals of 
independent and various use. Yet also, in any language, 


252 THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 


there will be, regularly or almost unavoidably, as many 
nasals as there are surd or sonant mutes, or one for every 
position of mute closure. 

Before quitting the subject of the three mute closures, 
each with its trio of sounds — surd, sonant, and nasal — 
we should note the relation in which they stand to the 
semivowels, already described. The d is nearly related 
_to the 7 and r, all being alike tongne-point letters: a 
relaxation of the contact at the tip of the tongue converts 
the d into an 7; a like relaxation at the side or sides of 
the tongue converts it into an /. All, especially the 7 and 
r, interchange frequently with one another in the history 
of language. So also, the flat of the tongue is so close to 
the roof of the mouth in y that a very slight further 
approximation, without change of place,-brings it to the 
closure producing k or g. Hence the ease with which a 
y-sound is inserted after the palatal mutes: an inser- 
tion which is a well-recognized beginning of corruption in 
many languages, leading to the change of k and g to ch 
andj. One of the latest downward steps in English or- 
thoépy has been the intrusion of this y-sound after & and 
g, in a not very large class of words, by a certain part of 
the community. Examples are kind (kyaind), guard 
(gya[r|d), girl Cgya[r]t), and so on. To those with 
whom this mode of pronunciation is not natural, and who 
have not acquired it later — myself, for example —it has 
a peculiarly affected and disagreeable sound ; and it cer- 
tainly is on general grounds to be discouraged. Once 
more, in 6, we have the lips just brought together which 
in ware on the very verge of closure — only here, it is 
true, there is the difference that the w involves also a 
rounding action, a drawing together of the corners of the 
mouth, which is wanting in the 6. The two, however, 
show abundantly by historical transitions that their rela- 
tionship is a real one ; and there is, as will be pointed out 
later, an intermediate between them. 


THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 258 


We next take up a class of sounds of which the char- 
acteristic quality is a rustling or friction through a nar- 
rowed aperture, left between the closely approximated 
organs at one and another point in the mouth: examples 
are 8, 2, f, v, th. Like the mutes, they go in pairs, surd 
and sonant, according as simple breath, or sound, inton- 
ated breath, is expelled through the same position of the 
organs; but, like the vowels, semivowels, and nasals, 
they are indefinitely continuable, because the breath finds 
escape from the mouth during their utterance. The 
name “ fricative,” which is frequently applied to them 
(especially by Lepsius), is probably as characteristically 
descriptive as any that could be selected for them. ' 

Let us notice first the pair of th-sounds, the surd th of 
thin and the sonant th of then. They are formed be- 
tween the tongue and the upper front teeth. We have 
seen already that if, in uttering a ¢, the tongue be laid 
well against the teeth, even though a real contact be 
made upon the gums immediately behind them, the ¢ has a 
perceptible tinge of th. Let the contact behind be severed, 
so that the tongue in front touches the teeth only, and th 
is the necessary result. For there can be no tight closure 
upon the teeth ; and whether the breath find its escape 
through the interstices of the teeth, or between tongue 
and teeth, the articulated result is the same. So also it 
is the same, whether the tip be kept inside the teeth, or 
whether it be taken and held between the two rows of 

eeth, or even thrust far out, so that the middle of the 
upper surface of the tongue touches the teeth. That is 
to say, in all these positions the product is an unmistak- 
able th-sound, its modifications of tone being of entirely 
subordinate value. The breath, it may be added, makes 
its way out just where it can, along the whole contact: 
usually, I think, its chief avenue is between the teeth 
themselves ; but if these are exceptionally tight, or if 
they be made artificially tight by closing the interstices 


254 THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 


with bits of wax, the exit is in larger measure, or wholly, 
between the tips and the tongue. ‘The truly descriptive 
name, then, for the pair-would be “ dentilingual,” or 
“ linguo-dental.”’ 

34. The surd th-sound of thin, path, filthy is, accord- 
ingly, an expulsion of unintonated breath between the 
tongue and the upper front teeth, laid directly in contact. 
. Although found in a not inconsiderable list of words, it 
is practically one of the rarest consonantal elements in 
English utterance, averaging little more than a half of one 
per cent. The tendency of English speech has long been 
toward its conversion into its sonant counterpart. 

30. The sonant th-sound of the, breathe, father, is an 
expulsion of intonated breath through precisely the same 
position. Since it is related to the other as d to ¢, it may 
be very fitly and conveniently represented by dh — which 
is its sign in Ellis’s ** Paleeotype ;”’ Lepsius writes the surd 
and sonant sounds by the Greek letters ¢ and 6, respect- 
ively. Unlike the other, it is one of the commonest 
consonants in the language, being exceeded by only half 
a dozen others ; its proportion rises to nearly four per cent. 
This is especially on account of the great frequency of 
occurrence of the pronominal words which contain it, like 
the, that, this, they, then, there : that it is found in a much 
greater number of separate words than the surd ¢A, is 
doubtful; in Old English, with its forms like hath and 
loveth, the advantage in point of separate words would 
doubtless be on the side of the surd sound, while yet in 
practical occurrence the sonant would be in advance. 

As noticed above, English usage tends to vocalize the 
th, converting it into dh. The familiar relation of the 
derivative verb to its noun-theme —as in bath bathe, 
(bédh), cloth clothe, sheath sheathe, and so on—is uni- 
formly observed by all. More anomalous is the change 
of the final surd to the sonant before the plural ending 
s; and here, accordingly, there is much more diversity in 


THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 255 


popular usage, and the orthoépic manuals are obliged to 
point out the right sound in each case, and insist upon its _ 
observance. Thus, they tell us that we must give the 
sonant sound in baths (badhz), oaths, moths, mouths, 
sheaths, and many more, and must give the surd in cloths, 
truths, youths, and a few others. I do not take pains to 
report my own usage with regard to this class of words, 
because I have nothing worth reporting; I have heard 
both sounds so often that to my ear, in a large number 
of cases, the one seems just as correct as the other, and 
it is only by the artificial process of consulting authorities 
Gf at all) that I rectify my pronunciation. 

Very nearly akin with this pair are the f and v sounds. 
The latter, like the former, bring the upper front teeth 
into action, but their contact is made upon the edge of 
the lower lip instead of upon the tongue. As th and dh, 
then, were dentilinguals, f and v are “ dentilabials.” 
Respecting the nature of the contact and the mode of 
issue of the escaping breath, precisely the same thing 
may be said which was said above in treating of the 
th-sounds. 

36. The surd jf-sound, accordingly, is produced by 
touching the edge of the lower lip with the tips of the 
upper teeth, and expelling through the contact a stream 
of unintonated breath. The two organs may be pressed 
together as closely as one pleases, since the interstices of 
the teeth take care that no actual mute closure is pro- 
duced. ‘The sound is represented in English not only by 
fF, but also by ph and gh (see below, p. 257). It 
averages in frequency a little more than two per cent. of 
our utterance. 

37. The v differs from the f only in being produced 
with tone, or intonated breath. It is a little more com- 
mon than its twin surd utterance, its average rising above 
two and one third per cent. It is to a certain extent pro- 
duced from the f, as the dh-sound from the th : so in deriy- 


256 THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 


ative verbs, halve from half, like breathe from breath ; and 
in plurals, staff staves, loaf loaves, like path paths ( padhz), 
oath oaths (Gdhz); only here, as our mode of writing has 
different representatives for the two sounds, the orthog- 
raphy comes in to aid the orthoépy, and there is no impor- 
tant discordance in general usage with regard to the change. 
The words in which f (or ph) is still written but v pro- 
nounced are very few, hardly more than of and Stephen: 
recent British usage has added nephew, which, however, 
is in America still almost universally spoken with the 
f-sound ; I never heard the v until comparatively recently. 
But a considerable part of our v’s are of French extrac- 
tion, being alterations (as referred to above, under w) of 
the old Latin w-sound (of vox, venio, vivus, etc.). 
Articulations like f and v do not absolutely require the 
aid of the teeth in order to their formation ; by a fricative 
contact between the edges of the lips alone may be pro- 
duced sounds which no one would think of calling by 
any other name, and which an unaccustomed ear, indeed, 
would hardly distinguish from those we make. This 
purely labial pair of fricatives are usual in many tongues: 
both are found, for example, in German, in the combi- 
nations pf ( pfund, pfropfen, etc.) and schw, zw (schwer, 
zwei, etc.) ; and German orthoépists are at variance as 
to whether in other situations also the purely labial or 
the dentilabial utterance is the more normal and less 
provincial! It is interesting, as bearing on the charac- 
ter of our w as a true semivowel and not a fricative, to 
compare its mode of formation with that of the purely 
labial v ; in the latter, the approximation of the lips is in 
their ordinary position, without rounding ; the buzz in 
the larynx is wholly neutral, and is obviously overborne 
by the labial rustling or frication, as giving character to 


1 Lepsius and Briicke both favor the dentilingual; but Ellis has shown 
(p. 1101 seq.) that the other is more common and better supported than ey 
had been aware. 


THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. ae 


the resulting sound; in the former, the corners of the lips 
are drawn in and their extremities protruded, just as in 
the vowel % (rule), and the tongue is also fixed for pro- 
ducing the same vowel; an @-tone is actually generated, | 
and may be prolonged as such, there being no frication 
which sensibly mars its quality. 

To a great extent these fricatives — th, dh, f, v — arise 
historically out of aspirates: that is, by the phonetic 
alteration of former mutes in which the breach of contact 
was followed by an audible, though very slight, expulsion 
of breath, a brief 4. Hence their frequent or regular 
representation by the compound characters th, ph —to 
which the German adds ch, as a palatal correspondent of 
the same class. Our own language once possessed the 
palatal fricative, and it is still written in many of our 
words, by the kindred digraph gh. But, taking a distaste 
to the sound, and refusing longer to utter it, we have in 
part simply silenced it, as in nigh, light, plough, and in 
part have converted it into the dentilabial of the same 
class, f, as in laugh, tough. And there is at least one word 
(1 know of no other), namely trough, in which a popular 
mispronunciation gives instead the dentilingual fricative, 
saying tréth: this was my own “ natural” way of speak- 
ing the word; and I presume that itis a peculiarity 
dating back in origin to the first transfer of the palatal 
fricative to another organ. 

The sounds thus far considered form so distinctly a 
single class of utterances, generally akin in origin, and 
dividing themselves approximately between the three 
principal positions of the articulating organs, that they are 
very suitably ranked together as a sub-class of fricatives, 
and may be called by the special name of “ spirants.” 

There remains, then, another sub-class, the sounds uni- 
versally known as “sibilants.” There are two pairs of 
them: the surd s and its sonant counterpart z, and the 


surd sh (which is just as simple a sound as s) and its 
17 


258 THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 


sonant counterpart in azure, vision, which we may distin- 
guish as the zh-sound.! 

All these four sounds are linguals, in the sense that 
they are produced between the tongue and the roof of the 
mouth. But there is, if I am not mistaken, a greater 
diversity among English speakers as regards their precise 
mode of utterance than is to be found in the case of any 
other letters. It necessary, therefore, to determine with 
eare the essential distinction between them. And this 
consists, I believe, solely in the region of the roof of the 
mouth at which they are brought forth: the s is made 
farther forward, close behind the upper teeth; the sh is 
made farther back. The division-line between the two 
may be best tested by passing the tip of the tongue along 
the palate, from the base of the upper front teeth back- 
ward. At the teeth, the sibilant is an s, and so a very 
little way from them, until an angle or ridge is reached 
from which the roof rises more rapidly to the dome of 
the palate; and that ridge is the dividing line: the 
moment the tongue begins to ascend toward the dome, 
the sh character prevails, and continues prevalent as far 
as the tongue can reach. But here, again, as in the 
case of the spirants, it is comparatively a matter of indif- 
ference what part of the tongue makes the determinative 
approach to the palate; it may be the tip, or a part of 
the upper surface, as far back of the tip as can be brought 
to the right place against the palate— or even a part of 
the under surface, applied by retroversion. 

38. The s-sound is, I believe, in actual practice formed 
in two quite different ways: in the one, the tip of the 
tongue is applied to the roof of the mouth close behind 
the upper front teeth, with a degree of approach slightly 
less than that which produced an 7, and the unintonated 
breath is forced through the narrow aperture, causing 
that peculiar kind and degree of frication or rustling 


1 Ellis, in his Paleotype, uses sh and zh ; Lepsius gives instead Sand 3, 


THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 259 


which we call hissing; in the other, the tongue is 
stretched farther forward, so that its tip rests squarely 
against the inner face of the lower front teeth, and the 
articulating aperture, though at the same point of the 
palate as before, is made with the flat upper surface of 
the tongue. Of the two, the former has, I doubt not, 
the better title to be deemed and called normal. Max 
Miiller’s and A. M. Bell’s figures, though differing not a 
little from one another,! both point decidedly to it, nor 
does Ellis, if I understand him, describe any other; but 
my own method is the other, and I have found it not 
uncommon among those persons whom I have examined . 
upon the point. As to the numerical relation between 
the two parties, I have no sufficient data for giving even 
a guess at it; I conjecture that all those persons who lisp 
in early childhood, because of thrusting the tongue too — 
far forward, grow up to produce this second variety of s. 
I presume that a sufficiently acute and practiced ear would 
readily’ distinguish the two from one another by their 
audible quality; they seem perceptibly different to me 
in my own mouth, though I have not learned to note 
them in others’ mouths. 

The s is one of the commonest of our utterances, its 
average rising to above four and two thirds per cent. ; 
that of its sonant counterpart, the z, falls short of three 
per cent. 

39. The z-sound is, of course, produced by every one 
with the same position as the s, differing from it only in 
the expulsion of intonated breath, which turns the hiss 
into a buzz. The difference of articulation between z and r 
is very slight indeed ; and one may even utter a z through 
the same position in which an 7 has just been produced, 
by driving out more breath than can find exit without a. 
rustling at the tip of the tongue. Hence, in many lan- 


1 Mr. Bell’s is, as usual, far the more accurate; Miiller’s position, if it gave 
any definable sound, would, I think, give a th. 


260 THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 


guages which have not yet acquired a z, the s, when it 
yields to a tendency to become sonant, is converted into 7: 
the Latin and Germanic languages are conspicuous exam- 
ples of this tendency in its historical workings, and in 
Sanskrit it forms part of the ordinary euphony of combi- 
nation of word with word in the sentence. 

A considerable share of our 2’s are comparatively recent 
corruptions of the s-sound: so, especially, of the final s 
of the possessives and plurals of nouns, and of the third 
persons singular of verbs: the exceptions being those 
forms in which a surd final of the theme is pronounced 
immediately before the s—and even there, in such cases 
as wolves, oaths (referred to above), the tendency to make 
the s sonant has overpowered and involved in the same 
change even the preceding final. The change is one re- 
cently and still in active progress; and consequently 
there are many words, and even whole classes of words, 
with regard to which usage is yet unsettled. My own 
pronunciation, in almost all such cases, adheres to the 
older s-sound. So, for example, in the classes beginning 
with the prefixes dis- and ex-: I naturally say disable, dis- 
band, disdain, disgust, dishonest, dismiss, disoblige, disrobe, 
etc., with a real s (not, however, discern, disease, dissolve); 
and I believe there is not a single word in which I pro- 
nounce ez- as egz-, without an effort specially directed to 
that end; what I say, however, is rather ekz- than eks- — 
that is to say, the sonant character of the following vowel 
infects the close of the consonant combination, though not 
the whole of it: and that, without regard to whether the 
syllable is unaccented, as in exert, or accented, as in ez- 
ercise. Among other words in which the z-sound is an 
abomination to my native ear, I will mention only such 
as Chinese and manganese, as Asia and Persia Cin which, 
I believe, the orthoépists still approve the s), as goose- 
berry, as grease (verb) and greasy, as vase (vés), as nasal 
(more doubtful). Nor did I ever hear the (first) ss of 


THE ELEMENTS OF: ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 261 


possess uttered as z till I had long learned to give it the 
other way. 

As for the conversion of s and z into sh and 2h, it will 
be spoken of under the latter pair of sounds. 

We have seen that the sh-sound is restricted to no such 
narrow limits as the s; it is a similar articulation, of a 
strongly sibilant or hissing character, producible between 
either the tip or the upper flat surface, or even the under 
surface, of the tongue, by near approximation to the roof 
of the mouth at a point behind the s-point, but capable 
of indefinite protraction backward. Bell describes and 
figures it as made with the tongue retracted a little from 
his s-position, yet not at all turned up at the point; on the 
contrary, still applying a good piece of its upper surface 
behind the point to the roof of the mouth: and this I 
presume to be the prevailing mode of English pronun- 
ciation. But Max Miller turns the point sharply up, 
bringing it within the dome of the palate, into our usual 
y-position. “[his is precisely the position in which the 
Sanskrit “ cerebral”’ or “ cacuminal ” sibilant was unques- 
tionably produced, but I am by no means prepared to be- 
lieve on Miiller’s authority that any considerable part of 
the English-speaking community form their sf thus; I 
have not in any of my inquiries met with such a case, 
and nothing could be more inconsistent with the common 
derivation of the sound in our language from an sy-sound. 
But there is yet another method, which I presume to be 
followed by all those who pronounce the s as I have de- 
scribed above, and which is my own method. Inmy sh, 
namely, the tip of the tongue touches the inner side of 
the lower front teeth, precisely as in s; the only differ- 
ence between the two is that in the former the articu- 
lating position is made a little farther back, and therefore 
with a somewhat posterior part of the tongue. In 
changing from the one to the other, the tip does not vary 
its position a particle; but in passing from s to sh the 


262 THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 


upper surface is pressed up behind and relaxed in front, 
while in passing from sf to s it is relaxed behind and 
pressed up in front; the point of nearest approach is 
shifted. 

40, The sh-sound, made in one or other of the ways 
described, is among the rarer English articulations, its av- 
erage being about five sixths of one per cent. Its being 
written with sh is for a like reason with the writing of th 
‘and ph, as explained above; it arises historically, in a 
large class of cases, out of the combination of an s with 
a following palatal spirant (compare the German sch). 
The physical explanation of the change is not difficult: 
in the fusing of the two sounds together into one, the 
palatal element has attracted the sibilant to a more pal- 
atal position. But the same influence is also exerted by 
the y, the palatal semivowel; and, according to our pres- 
ent habits of speech, nothing leads so directly to an sh- 
sound as the combination of s and y. In hasty and care- 
less (not necessarily slovenly) utterance, sh is even made 
out of an s and y that meet in two successive words: as 
in ‘¢ thus you see,” “ bless your sweet face.” And a large 
share of the acknowledged and approved sh-sounds of the 
language come from a similar combination: either where 
the y has a written representative, as in nation, gracious, 
anxious, ocean, conscience ; or where a “long wu” (yu) 
follows the sibilant, as in swre, insurance. 

By sound theory, when an s-sound has been converted 
into sh by thus absorbing into itself, as it were, a follow- 
ing y-sound, the vowel representing the latter ought not 
to be pronounced in addition and form a separate syllable. 
Thus, we ought to say either pro-nun-ci-(=s?)-a-tion or- 
pro-nun-cia-(—=shé)-tion. Good usage, however, accepts 
no such theory as binding, and the utterance especially of 
ciate and tiate as shi-ét (as in officiate, substantiate) is not 
only approved by authority but -well-nigh universal. Yet 
there is also a class of words in which usage is fluctuat- 


THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 268 


ing, and the orthoépists more categorical in their decis- 
ions than either analogy or usage warrants; we may 
take as examples (not the best, perhaps, that could be 
found) nausea, nauseate, nauseous, in which s?-a, shi-a, 
and sha are all in good common currency. To me it is 
natural to say pro-nun-ci-a-tion, ne-go-ti-(==si)-a-tion, and 
their like. 

41. The corresponding sonant to sh, the zh-sound of 
occasion, pleasure, glazier, azure, is the rarest in the lan- 
guage ; I have found but two cases of it in 10,000 sounds 
(a fiftieth of one per cent.): though one may well enough 
chance to fall in with passages where it is much more 
frequent, since the words in which it occurs form a respect- 
able body, and some of them are quite familiar. It is no 
long-established member of our alphabet, but has in every 
instance grown out of a z-sound followed by a y, pre- 
cisely as sh out of s and y, in the manner just explained: 
we may also hear it in careless utterance where z and y 
meet in the sentence, as in “he loves you well,” ‘it is 
usual.” 

The zh and sh sounds, however, are likewise found in a 
quite considerable class of cases in close combination with 
a preceding mute, forming what we know as the ch andj 
sounds, in church and judge. If we write the pure sibi- 
lants with sh and zh, it is perfectly proper to write these 
compounds with tsh and dzh.t. Yet this representation 
would require in one respect a little explanation, inas- 
much as the ¢ and d are not precisely those which we 
usually utter, but are produced by a contact just at that 
point where a near approximation produces the sibilant ; 
they are a more palatal ¢ and d. The compounds are closely 
akin in character with the ts (written z) and pf of the 
Germans: a mute with its corresponding fricative ap- 
pended, implying a relaxation of the contact before its com- 
plete abandonment, a dwelling upon a transitional sound 


1 Itis thus that Ellis represents them in his Paleotype; Lepsius prefers ¢ andj. 


264 THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. — 


or glide, and bringing it to distinct audibility. And so 
close is, to the ear, the union of the two elements, that 
many English speakers, even writers upon orthoépy, be- 
lieve and teach that the ch andj sounds are simple and 
indivisible. I would not deny the possibility that here, 
as in some other similarly contested cases, an actual di- 
versity of pronunciation may underlie the difference of 
analysis and definition; yet I should be more disposed to 
question it here than anywhere else. 

In making a numerical analysis of English utterance, 
I have —I confess, with questionable judgment — reck- 
oned the ch and 7 sounds as independent elements, be- 
cause of their distinct origin and etymological value, 
and especially because they are after all not accurately 
represented by writing them with ¢ and d and accom- 
panying sibilant. The ch, so far as it is more ancient 
and Saxon, comes mainly from an earlier surd palatal, 
as in choose, much, teach, catch ; the j-sound belongs to 
the Romanic side of our language, and comes either from 
a Latin y-sound, as in just, joy, June, or from a sonant 
palatal mute, as in agent, origin. But, apart from this 
whole earlier class of cases, both are abundantly derived 
in modern usage from combinations of ¢ and d with a 
following y-sound — just as the simple sh and zh from 
s-y and z-y ; and, like the latter, they have their analo- 
gies in the careless combinations of the sentence, as in 
‘did you go?” *“ what you saw.’ Examples are ques- 
tion, Christian, righteous, nature, virtue, actual; and sol- 
dier (some people say also hideous, odious in the same 
way), grandeur, arduous, individual. The consent of 
the orthoépical authorities is far behind the popular usage 
in these words: but one may precisely as soon think of 
denying the sh and 2h of nation and pleasure as the ch 
and j of nature and grandeur. 

42. Reckoning the ch as only one sound, I find it to 
average just above a half of one per cent. in English 


THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 265 


usage. Analyzing it into its constituents, it would give a 
palatal ¢ of that frequency, and would raise the occur- 
rence of sh to nearly one and a half per cent. 

43. The j-sound, in like manner, averages just below a 
half of one per cent. The zh, therefore, is vastly more 
frequent in this combination than as an independent 
sound. 

We must not pass without notice the fact that in such 
words as inch and hinge, where a nasal precedes the ch or 
47 sound, it is assimilated to their first element, and be- 
comes a more palatal n. If, then, we were to reckon the 
ch and j as contributing each a palatal ¢ and d@ to the 
enumeration of English sounds, we should have to ac- 
knowledge this n also, and assign it a certain percentage.? 

The English is sometimes accused of an unpleasant 
predominance of hissing or sibilant sounds ; and not with- 
out some reason, since the sum of sibilant elements 
amounts to nine and a half per cent., or nearly one tenth 
of our whole utterance. In French, however, according 
to my reckoning, the proportion is even a shade larger, 
and in ancient Greek it was over twelve per cent. ; of our 
modern Germanic relatives, the German and the Swedish 
have each about six per cent. 

There remains, of our English sounds, only that one 
which we write by the sign A. It never occurs in our 
utterance excepting before a vowel, or before one of the 
semivowels w and y, as in whip and hue (according to my 
pronunciation of them: see below). It is a sound of 
very peculiar character, in that it is not, like all the other 
members of the alphabet, limited to a particular position 
of the mouth-organs, but is an audible expulsion of un- 
intonated breath, of flatus, through the same articulating 
position in which the following letter, whatever it be, is 
uttered. In pronouncing ha, for example, the mouth-or- 


1 It occurs, in the 10,000 sounds which I have counted, thirteen times, or 
forms of them one eighth of one per cent. 


266 THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 


gans are first fixed to say a, and then a rush of air 
through them, before the a begins, is heard as the A. In 
pronouncing he (Ai), again, the 7-position is assumed 
before the utterance begins ; in who (hi), im like manner, 
the a-position. There is a difference between this audi- 
ble rush of air and the mere passage of breath, which 
may be effected so gently as to produce nothing audible, 
in all the various articulating positions, fricative as well 
as vocalic. There is also a difference between it and a 
whispered vowel, in which a very distinctly characterized, 
though imperfectly intoned, vowel-sound is produced in 
the larynx itself, by an imperfect tension and vibration 
of the vocal cords: like the imperfectly resonant tone, 
yet of distinct pitch, which can be drawn from a pipe or 
flute by blowing rudely upon it. The audible quality of 
the h seems to be produced simply by forcing through a 
fuller and more rapid current of air than can pass unno- 
ticed, one of which the general friction against the walls 
of the throat and mouth is sufficient to be perceptible to 
the ear: whence the h is, as every singer knows, more 
exhaustive of the breath than any other utterance. Even 
if, however, there be sometimes an accompanying and 
auxiliary narrowing of the passage from the throat in any 
part, made for the sake of plainer and easier audibleness, 
and varying with the different styles of utterance (as I do 
not think that there is), it is not of the nature of an ar- 
ticulation, but only of a modification of the material fur- 
nished to the articulating position ; it would be analogous 
with the resonant utterance which makes the sonant con- 
sonants and vowels, with the flatus which makes the 
other surd consonants, with the nasal tone which makes 
the nasals, with that peculiar modification of resonance 
which makes the whisper, and so on — the kinds of mate- 
rial which are expelled through a variety of mouth-posi- 
tions, and which, in virtue of those positions, take the 
value of distinct articulations, or “letters.” It would 


THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 267 


still remain the characteristic property of the h that it 
alone has no definite mouth-position, but is spoken indif- 
ferently through the whole series of vowel and semivowel 
positions. By historical descent, the h, or pure aspiration, 
comes usually from a guttural spirant, an utterance in 
which there is a real fricative approach of: the organs to 
one another in the back part of the mouth, a definite 
position which the organs assume, and from which they 
make a transition to that for the following letter. When 
this fricative approach is abandoned, when there takes 
place only the rush of air, wholly governed in respect to 
its articulating position by the next letter, then the 
spirant has become an aspiration, the kh or ch (Ger- 
man) or x has become anf. This indefinitizing process 
has gone on in many languages; and it is apt to be fol- 
lowed by an evanescent process, in which the A itself 
becomes silent and disappears to the ear. 

There is a difference perfectly appreciable between the 
various expulsions of breath which we group together 
under the sign 4. Only pronounce them by themselves, 
and dwell upon and watch them, and their discordant 
character is clearly apparent. But the difference is of-a 
subordinate value only, like that, for instance, between 
the & of ki and that of ku; it is so slight that the ear 
overlooks it, and apprehends them all as virtually one. 
The peculiarity may be formulated somewhat thus: in 
the closer consonantal positions of the mouth-organs, an 
expulsion even of unintonated breath yields a sufficiently 
individualized and characterized sound to be apprehended 
as a distinct alphabetic element, and the letters conse- 
quently go in pairs, one surd and one sonant for each ar- 
ticulating position; but in the openest consonantal posi- 
tions and the yet opener vowels, the unintonated expulsion 
is so imperfectly characterized that its differences are dis- 
regarded, and they all together add only one element to 
the system of sounds. 


268 THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 


To this class of opener positions, which alike produce 
an.h, belong not only all the vowels and the two semi- 
vowels w and y, but also the other two semivowels, 7 and 
Z, and the whole class of nasals. In other languages (as 
the Anglo-Saxon, Gothic, Sanskrit), though not in Eng- 
lish, these too may be preceded by 2; and when we pro- 
duce the combinations Al, hr, hm, hn, as there found, we 
never think of doing otherwise than fix the organs for 
_ the utterance of the following letter before the h itself is 
uttered. 

I define h, then, as a collective sign under which are 
comprehended the various but not essentially different 
surd correspondents of the vowels, semi-vowels, and na- 
sals: these three opener classes of sonants have but a 
single common surd, while, of the closer sibilants, spir- 
ants, and mutes, every sonant letter has its own corre- 
sponding surd. 

Of course, the nearer we approach in articulating po- 
sition to the degree of closeness which makes the pairs, 
surd and sonant, of fricatives and mutes, the nearer does 
the corresponding aspiration come to being a distinct and 
independent sound, able to maintain its value as such in 
an alphabetical scheme. And it is claimed by some pho- 
netists of great eminence (as Ellis and Bell) that in when 
and hue, as in all the other words pronounced like them, 
the w and y elements have become obliterated, and that 
there remains before the vowel in either case only a surd 
wandasurd y. This would be a parallel to the history 
of the ng-sound ; an element which at first appeared only 
in a dependent character, conditioned by the following 
sound, had finally, by the removal of that upon which 
it formerly leaned, assumed a degree of independence. 
In my view of the essential character of the A-sound 
there is nothing whatever which should stand in the 
way of the possibility of this; and I have perhaps been 
too reluctant hitherto to admit it as an actuality in 


THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 269 


the present utterance of English.! I will only be posi- 
tively certain that I myself say hwen and hyu, and very 
confident also that I have heard and hear the same pro- 
nunciation from those about me ; how the case may be 
in other divisions of the great and not too accordant com- 
munity of English speakers, I will leave to others to 
determine. But I am sure that many persons who are 
uninformed as to the true character of the aspiration are 
without any reason, and unfairly, driven off their well- 
founded opinion that their when is really hwén, in some 
such way as by being told to set their mouths for the 
initial of hen, and then try to say when. Of course, 
they fail, because the h of hwen is not at all the same 
sound as that of hen; but then the h of hen is equally 
not the same with that of hat or harp or hot or hind ; 
and if one were to set his mouth for any one of the 
five, he would equally fail in striking any of the others 
without changing his set. If it is proper to call all those 
five varying initials an ‘“ aspiration,” and to write them 
with h, it is equally proper to call the initials of when 
and hue by the same name, and to represent them by the 
same sign. ‘There are very few persons whose own word 
I would take as to whether they do or do not say hwen. 
That those who say hwen and hyu have preserved an 
earlier and fuller sound, which has suffered corruption 
and abbreviation in the mouths of the other party, ad- 
mits no serious question. In the case of the hue class, 
the sound is obviously made up of the same yu which we 
have as the pronunciation of “ long uw” in use, pure, muse, 
beauty, cure, and so on, with the initial h. If there 
are any who do not now sound the y-element, it has 
been dropped out. As to the other class, the fact is 
equally indisputable, though less obvious. The Ger- 
manic (including English) A comes in general from a pal- 


1 See the first volume of these Studies, p. 270, and Ellis’s remarks in his 
Early English Pronunciation, p. 1142 seq, 


270 THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 


atal mute, a #-sound, of the older Indo-European lan- 
guage: thus, for example, our heart corresponds to Latin 
cord-, Greek xapdia ; and horn to Latin cornu, Greek xepar-, 
and so on. And so it is also with the hw words: what 
(Anglo-Saxon hwet), for example, is the correlative of 
Latin quod, and owes its h-sound,‘as do heart and horn, 
to the conversion, first into a spirant and then into the ~ 
_ aspiration, of the & which preceded the w. There is no 
reason whatever for supposing that the Anglo-Saxons did 
not pronounce hweet, etc., just as they spelled them; and 
if a considerable part of the present users of English still 
give the same sound to the combination which, by a curi- 
ous orthographic blunder, we have now come to write with 
wh instead of hw, it is because they are faithful to the 
more complete utterance. With a great part of the vul- 
gar speakers of English, the tendency is toward elimi- 
nating the surd instead of the sonant element of the 
combination which ought to contain both, converting 
when into wen; I do not see why, in theory, the one 
mutilation is any worse or better than the other. 

44, In adding, therefore, the simple aspiration h to 
complete the alphabet of English as it is in my mouth, I 
do not distinguish the initial elements of when and hue 
from the other numerous varieties of aspiration which 
that character is used to designate. Including these, the 
his one of the more usual English sounds, its average 
rising to two and one third per cent of our utterance.! 

As regards the small class of words respecting which 
good usage is undecided whether to omit or retain the h, 
I may mention that my natural pronunciation gives the 
h to humble and humor (in all senses), but refuses it to 
herb (and its immediate derivatives) and homage. 

Another matter of discordant usage in connection with 


1 A little more than the odd third of one per cent. is contributed by the 
semivowel aspirates : with exactness, 43 in 10,000 ; 39 of these are cases like 
when, and only four like hue. 


THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 271 


h is, what form the indefinite article shall take before 
words beginning with it. -An being the older form of the 
article, and its reduction to a before a consonant being a 
more recent abbreviation, the light and half-vocalic 2 has 
been the slowest and latest to exert its full consonantal 
influence, In our English Bible-version, as in other 
_ works of the same period, and even much later, an is 
very commonly retained before an h of any kind; and by 
most modern orthoépists the rule is laid down that a be 
employed before the (pronounced) initial h of an accented 
syllable, but an before that of an unaccented syllable: 
that we say, therefore, a history, but an harangue, an 
historical tract, and so on. Writers of excellent stand- 
ing, however, on both sides of the Atlantic, ignore this 
rule, and use only a before an actually uttered h, whether 
in an accented or an unaccented syllable. And such is 
the popular usage in the section of English speakers to 
which I belong; it was formerly not a particle less 
strange and unnatural to me to say an harangue or an 
hotel than an heart or an handkerchief 

The sounds thus recognized as constituting the English 
spoken alphabet may be arranged, by their physical char- 
acteristics and relations, in the scheme on the following 
page, which begins with the openest sound and ends 
with the closest sounds, exhibiting the various classes 
and series in accordance with the description which has 
been already given of them. 

The reasons of this arrangement will have been in the 
main made evident by the foregoing exposition: some 
points in it will be the subject of further remark in the 
next article.? 


1 See also p. 172. 
2 And the table is repeated, in a somewhat modified form, on p. 286. 


272 THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 


PHYSICAL SCHEME OF THE ENGLISH SPOKEN ALPHABET. 


a 
evita 
wi; A 
e a 6 Vowels. 
Sonant. é a o 
@ at, At au u 
z n, l a 
Oo oO 
y ro w Semivowels. 
ng n m Nasals. 
Surd. A Aspiration. 
Sonmbinal neh i Sibilants. 
Surd. sh § 
Sonant. dh v i Spiranth 
Surd. th St 
Sonant. g d b f Mutes. 
Surd. k t p 
Sonant. j i 
Compound. 

Surd. ch ; 

Palatal Lingual Labial 

Series. Series. Series. 


In judging, now, the general character of English pro- 
nunciation, it is of considerable interest to know how fre- 
quently the various articulations make their appearance 
in the sum of utterance. I have endeavored to deter- 
mine this,! upon a sufficiently wide basis of selected pas- 
sages to furnish a trustworthy average; and I have re- 
ported the results above, in treating of each sound. It 
remains to explain here the method adopted, and to pre- 
sent the results reached in a compact and tabular form 
together. | 

I made a selection of ten passages, five in poetry and 
five in prose, from as many authors, of various periods, 
and separated and counted the individual sounds as met 


1 Of course, for my own pronunciation; but the principal data may be taken 
as belonging, nearly as given, to the general language. 


THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 273 


with in each, until the number of 1,000 sounds was 
reached. ‘The passages were as follows :— 

I. From Shakespeare’s ‘“‘ Julius Ceesar,’’ Antony’s speech 
over the body of Cesar, nearly 38 lines, 288 words, 373 
syllables ; 

II. From Milton’s “ Paradise Lost,” at the beginning, 
304 lines, 274 words, 358 syllables ; 

III. From Gray’s “ Elegy ina Country Churchyard,” at 
the beginning, nearly 9 verses, 272 words, 357 syllables ; 

IV. From Bryant’s “ Thanatopsis,” at the beginning, 
nearly 36 lines, 283 words, 364 syllables ; 

V. From Tennyson’s * In Memoriam,” section Ixxxiii., 
a little more than 11 verses, 284 words, 358 syllables ; 

VI. From the Bible, in King James’s version, Psalm 
xxvil., nearly 13 verses, 819 words, 396 syllables ; 

VI. From Dr. Johnson’s “ Rasselas,” at the beginning, 
263 words, 388 syllables ; 

VIII. From Goldsmith’s * Vicar of .Wakefield,” the 
beginning, 269 words, 390 syllables ; 

IX. From Carlyle’s “Sartor Resartus,” book ii., chapter 
8, eighth paragraph (on “ the net purport and upshot of 
war’’), 258 words, 371 syllables ; 

X. From Macaulay’s essay on Milton, part of the pas- 
sage relating to the Puritans, 236 words, 374 syllables. 

The main results are given in the table on the next 
page. I did not think it worth while to present them in all 
their detail for every passage, but give for each sound the 
general average, drawn from all the passages, and in the 
order of frequency of occurrence, so arranged that it may 
be read as a scale of frequency for the whole alphabet, or 
for the consonantal and vowel systems taken separately. 
And as it is of interest to note the limits of variation of 
each sound, I add in the last two columns the least and 
the greatest number found in any one passage, with spec- 
ification of the passage or passages in which it is found. 


The variation is for the most part a natural one, such as 
18 


274 THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 


SCALE AND RATE OF FREQUENCY OF ENGLISH SOUNDS. 


seem | Yowel.| cts, ree Minimum. Maximum. 
r 7.44 bps bp 5.4| VIII. 9.3 
n 6.76 Ta eras 5.7| IX. 7.9 
t 5.93 Bod lie 6 4.6| II. 8.9 
i Hi 5.90 | VI 4.7| VIL. 7.4 
‘ 9 ss 5.66 | IL. 4.3| I, VI. 6.9 
d 4.94 MASE sc 4.0| V. 5.8 
8 4.69 of, VOT ac] Gait 5.8 
1 3.84 hl be Racks 9.5] IIT. 6.2 
dh 3.83 we OL VIE 9.4| III. 5.1 
é st 3.34 | L.-T 9.6| IX. 4,7 
14 3.32 | IIT 2.4) VII 4.0 
m 3.06 ae oe igiy 1.3] I. 4.1 
z 2.92 ROT 9.9) I. 4.3 
3 i Me 2.80 | VIL, Ix 1.5| VI. 4.8 
ne di ‘s 9.59 | IV., 1X 1.8] VIL. 4.2 
v 2.37 : Teac 1s 1.4| VII. 3.5 
h 9.34 aoaty fe bt 1.9] V. 3.1 
0 2.31 ts 3] EE 1.6] VII. 3.0 
k 2.17 es fk f Ripe é 3.1 
f 2.06 ep AES OVER. 1.2] II. 2.8 
ss i he 2.00 | VI. 1.1| I. 3.5 
Se at ge 1.91 | IX .9| VI. - 48 
- x i 1.85 *| I. .9| VII. 2.5 
A 6 iM 1.76 | X. .9| TIT. 2.6 
p 1.71 5 ty 1.0] VIL. 2.6 
b 16401 ee Es 1.0] I. 3.4 
é ms 1.61 | 1 5] X. 2.7 
A a 1.54 |X .8| IL 2.2 
sh 86 TE, 1| IV. 1.8 
au ¥ 83 | X. .3| IIL, IV. 1.3 
9 79 es A weg bab < .3| VII. 1.6 
ng 79 Sail Bd -1]| IU, VII. 1.4 
y 66 pon by Bek .3| IV. cla 
th 58 > 4 VI .2| IV. 1.0 
a ¢ 56 | VIIL,X 1] IX. 1.2 
ch 53 Fi GORT 1) VII. 1.2 
x i ‘47 | VII. .0} IIL. 1.4 
AT ihuall ya al TX: 9 
A ti ne HA. il Xe} & .2| VIL. 1.2 
Z 35 | VIL is is 7 
n i 76 3] Ry, 10 0} Hy Why Ei eee 
ii ti 12 | Teel VL .0| III.-VI., 2 
6 At 08 | IL, 1V., VL, VI. .0} 1, 01 2 
ah 00s diictah Godda WALL: Ole ee 7 


62.71 | 387.29 


THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION. 2D 


might be found anywhere on comparing one extract with 
another, as I endeavored not to take any extracts which 
showed a prevalence of a particular word or words: but 
this could not always be avoided; and the Brutus of the 
‘Shakespeare passage, for instance, and the J and my of 
that from the Bible, exhibit their effects clearly in the 
numbers given. ‘The figures of the first two columns, as 
read without the decimal point, give the whole number of 
occurrences in the 10,000 sounds ; those of the last two, 
read in the same way, the number in each 1,000; the de- 
cimal point converts all alike into an expression of per- 
centage. } 

It should be noted that the number given for 7 repre- 
sents the more accepted pronunciation, rather than my 
own natural one (which would leave, as explained above, 
370 of the 744 cases unpronounced). As for the unac- 
cented vowels, I have estimated them as well as I could, 
according to a good and careful reading style, not a col- 
loquial one; no one, I presume, could go over the same 
passages twice and reach precisely the same results both 
times. 

The proportion of vowels to consonants in English 
speech appears to be as 37.3 to 62.7. The percentage of 
vowels is, I believe, a little less in German, ‘a little more 
in Swedish (38.3), yet more in French (over 40), 41 in 
_ Gothic, 42 in Sanskrit, 44 in Latin, 46 in Greek. 

The number of words in all the ten passages being 
2,746, it appears that the average number of syllables in 
an English word is (8729-2746) 1.358 ;1 that of sounds 
to a word is (10,000+2746) 3.642; that of consonants 
to a syllable is (6271+-3729) 1.682. 


1 The actual number of monosyllables in the ten passages is 2028, or 73.8 per 
cent., the range of variation of percentage being between 65.4 (VII.) and 81.2 
(VI.); the dissyllables are 510, or 18.6 per cent.; the trisyllables are 146, or 5.3 
per cent. ; the words of four syllables are 50, or 1.8 per cent.; and there are 11 
words of five syllables, and 1 of six. 


276 


THE ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION 


A few more general combinations and comparisons may 


be worth making. 


First, of the ovele ; the classes are as follows : 


Palatal . : . ars We ps Be 
Labial . : : 8.41 
Lingual (2, 2) : : 51 
Neutral (including a) 8.07 
Diphthongs . eS Acts 


Openest (a) : : -56 
Next degree (@, d, 4). 7.92 
Medial (e, 0) : - 6.79 
Closest (4, u)* 2. . 11.14 


Again, for the consonants : — 


Palatal ‘ : ° 
Lingual . 
Labial : ° : 
Neutral (2)  . 


Mutesi } Bends? 
Spirants . Saeigy 
Sibilants! . } Suniel 
Fricatives sen 
Nasals : , : 
Semivowels . é : 
Aspiration ° ° 


p= 
WO RWWA SN 


. 8.84 


. 18.33 


Sim Do woo 
oe FO Pe 


“1D 
Lo 


. 14.25 
- 2.84 


e 
. 


Finally, comparing the surd and sonant elements, we 


have — 
Of pairs of cons. 
Surds, 18.53 
Sonants, 16.98 


Of all cons. Of whole alphabet, 
20.87 20.87 
41.84 79.13 


1 In this combination, the compounds ch and j are counted twice, once as mute 


and once as sibilant. 


TX. 


THE RELATION OF VOWEL AND CON- 
SONANT. 


——¢-———= 


GREAT progress has been made in phonological science 
during the past score or two of years, and it is hardly too 
much to say that the mode of production of the ordinary 
articulate sounds composing human language is now un- 
derstood in all its main features. This is especially true 
of the consonants, which are easier of investigation. 
‘The vowels are more difficult ; and only the most recent . 
researches of the ablest phonetists and physicists have 
succeeded in giving anything like an exact scientific defi- 
nition of what makes an a, an 2, an uw, etc., as distin- 
guished from one another ; and, approximately, by what 
muscular action in the organs of speech they receive their 
characteristic quality. As regards this last matter, it 
can very probably never be determined otherwise than 
approximately ; the processes are too complicated and 
obscure to allow of more than that. 

I do not mean that phonetic science has not still before 
it a great task to accomplish, and a great career to run. 
So, for one thing, in the way of gaining diffusion. There 
are a host of discordant and indefensible views, or half- 
views, current among philologists on phonetic subjects, 
which are due simply to an unenlightened or prejudiced 
disregard of truths in phonology already well established 
—a disregard which another generation, probably, will 
see removed. ‘Then there is well-nigh an infinity of liv- 
ing dialects as yet unexamined or insufficiently examined, 


218 THE RELATION OF VOWEL AND CONSONANT. 


and the exact study of the sounds they use will in every 
case have its contributions to make to the comprehension 
of human utterance, and to the solution of the problems 
of its past history. And to solve these problems will be 
the last and hardest task, a task to which the science will 
return again and again, as it gets a wider and firmer grasp 
of its facts, and a clearer insight into their connections 
and causes. But there will be a great deal in the per- 
fected science of phonology which will have only a slighter 
and more indirect bearing on the historical science of lan- 
guage. There is, if I mistake not, a tendency on the 
part of some of the eminent phonetists of the day to 
exaggerate the importance of their special department 
of linguistic study, almost to hold that the history of lan- 
guage is the history of articulate sounds, their combina- 
tions and changes. It is in fact a great deal more than 
this : this is even, however important, only a subordinate 
department of the study. The history of language in- 
cludes also, and especially, the history of words as repre- 
senting thought, of words with meanings, of vocabularies ; 
the history of parts of speech, of grammatical structure, 
of forms and their uses, of syntactical combinations. If 
there were a language of written and visible signs alone, 
it would still be as worthy an object of the linguistic 
scholar’s study as if every stroke in every sign were a 
sound addressed to the ear. And the phonetist’s work is 
not destitute of analogy with what would be the work of 
a student of the visible sign if language in general were 
written instead of spoken. We are not cut off from 
fruitful knowledge of a tongue by not being able to read 
under its written form the exact tones in which its speak- 
ers gave it; not even though our misrepresentation of 
its spoken form be as gross as that which we are actually 
guilty of in the case of ancient Greek. To lose its pho- 
netic reality and history is to lose a great deal, to be sure ; 
yet, after all, only a minor part. The highest practical 


THE RELATION OF VOWEL AND CONSONANT. 279 


office of phonetics is to cast such light on the changes of 
sounds as shall help the identification of related words 
and forms, giving an increased degree of precision to the 
processes of the etymologist and of certainty to his re- 
sults. The gradual improvement and perfection of the 
study will increase its value in this regard. But it will 
also become by itself a definite science, or department of 
study, having its close and important relations to phy- 
siology and acoustics, as well as to philology. There will 
always continue to be, as there are at present, great phil- 
ologists who are poor phonologists.? 

A not unimportant part, in my view, of the process of 
reducing the results of physical study of the alphabet to 
a form useful for the historical philologist is the construc- 
tion of a scheme of arrangement for alphabetic sounds 
which shall exhibit their relations most clearly and 
fully. ‘The spoken alphabet of any language is a more 
or less orderly and well-proportioned system, with lines 
of connection running through it in various directions ; 
and it requires to be viewed as such, if its history of de- 
velopment is to be well understood. ‘The subject is one 
which is overlooked by many phonetists and philologists, 
and which has, as I think, been imperfectly treated by 
others ; I propose, therefore, to submit it here to a new 
examination — and especially, with regard to the funda- 
mental point of the relation of vowels and consonants.” 

The triangular arrangement of the vowels, with a 
_ (far) at its apex, as openest and least orally modified of 


1 And this, notwithstanding the opinions of those who hold, with Key, that 
observations on the chorde vocales lie at the foundation of the whole study of 
human speech; or, with Farrar, that ‘‘ the physiology of the human voice is 
the true basis upon which all inquiries into the origin of language and the mut- 
ual connection of languages should be built.”” (Comparative Grammar, Lon- 
don, 1869, p. 1.) 

2 J have discussed the matter at some length in two articles on the Standard 
Alphabet of Professor Lepsius, published in the seventh and eighth volumes 
(1863-65) of the Journ. Am. Oriental Society ; and upon them the present essay 
is in great measure founded. 


280 THE RELATION OF VOWEL AND CONSONANT. 


vowel-sounds, and with 7 ( pique) and & (rule) at the two 
extremities of its base, as the closest and most orally 
modified (by action in two different parts of the mouth) 
of possible vowel-sounds, is so widely known and so gener- 
ally adopted among philologists that its value may be 
taken for granted without many words spent upon it. 
To the historical student in various and widely discord- 
ant families of language, it takes cognizance of and helps 
to explain a fact of prime importance — the greater orig- 
inality of these three vowels, and the development of 
others from them and between them. Few, if any, ex- 
isting languages fail to possess at least the intermediate 
sounds e (they) and o (tone); a very large proportion 
have no other than these five. 

Usually, however, those who study the spoken alphabet 
have been content to treat vowel and consonant as two 
independent entities, partners in the work of articulate 
expression, indissolubly married together-for the uses of 
speech, yet distinct individuals, to be classified and ar- 
ranged in separate systems. Now it may be theoretically 
conceivable that the products of the organs of articula- 
tion should be thus of two diverse kinds: just as the 
human race is composed of two distinct sexes, each having 
its own part to play in the work of the race; any true 
intermediate form or combination of the two being impos- 
sible, any apparent one a monstrosity. But is this actu- 
ally the case in the spoken alphabet ? I think decidedly 
not. ‘The simple fact of the occurrence in our phonologi- 
cal vocabulary of the term semivowel. is enough to shake 
such a theory to its foundation. ‘Think of a woman who 
should be a ‘*semi-man”’! There is, on the one hand, 
a not inconsiderable body of sounds, known by various 
names — as semivowels, liquids, nasals — in which, though 
we reckon them as consonants, we recognize a special 
kindred with the vowels, insomuch that they even some- 
times assume vocalic value: as do, for example, in our 


THE RELATION OF VOWEL AND CONSONANT. 281 


own language, / and n (see above, p. 233). On the other 

hand, there are two vowels, t and @, which are so closely 
allied to consonants that, when we put them in the same 
syllable before another vowel, we can hardly keep them 
from passing into sounds which we are accustomed to rep- 
resent by y and w, regarding them as consonantal and not 
vocalic (see above, p. 239). These are the prominent facts 
which seem to oppose the theory of the independence of 
vowel and consonant, and compel us to inquire more nar- 
rowly into what we are to understand respectively by a 
vocalic and a consonantal character. We do not need to 
supersede or alter any of the definitions of single sounds, 
or even of the principal groups of sounds, already pre- 
vailing ; we only want to find the tie which unites them 
into more comprehensive classes, and even, if possible, a 
principle on which the whole alphabet of articulated prod- 
ucts may be arranged as a single system, without distor- 
tion or disguise of the relations borne by its different 
members to one another. 

It does not appear to me that this needed principle is 
difficult to find, nor, when found, of doubtful application. 
It consists in the antithesis of material and form, in the 
respective part played in the production of the different 
alphabetic sounds by the organs of the lungs and throat, 
and by the organs of the mouth— the former furnishing 
the column of air, the breath or tone, the latter modify- 
ing this breath or tone and giving it various individu- 
ality. ‘Those sounds in which the material, the element 
of tone, predominates, are vowels; those in which the 
other element, the oral modification, predominates, are 
consonants; but there is no absolute line of division 
between the two great classes; each has its degrees 
whereby it approaches the other; there is a continuous 
line of progression from the openest and purest vowel to 
the closest and most absolute consonant, and a border- 
territory between, where the sounds are of doubtful or 
double character. 


282 THE RELATION OF VOWEL AND CONSONANT. 


The starting-point of the various lines of progression is 
the vowel a (far); ais the simplest and purest tone- 
sound which, in virtue of its peculiar structure, the 
human throat brings forth. This is its true phonetic de- 
scription. ‘To determine the fundamental and secondary 
vibrations which give to a its acoustic character, to as- 
certain the length of pipe, or the degree and kind of ori- 
ficial closure, needful to produce it when the tones of 
' human organs are imitated by means of artificial con- 
structions —these and other like investigations have a 
high theoretic interest, while yet, in their bearing on 
linguistic phonology, they are of only subordinate conse- 
quence: sounds are produced for the purposes of human 
speech by the voluntary efforts of human organs, and are 
to be estimated and classified according to those efforts. 

If, now, from that position in which a is uttered, we 
raise the upper flat surface of the tongue toward the roof 
of the mouth, at the highest point of the latter and 
farther back, successive degrees of elevation and ap- 
proach will give us the vowels of fat (@), they (e), and 
pique (i). The accompanying closure of the jaws and 
lips is here absolutely unessential, contributing’ nothing 
to the characterization of the sounds ; it is made merely 
for the convenience of the tongue, helping its access to 
the palate. The closest sound with predominating tone 
producible by this method is 7; a next further degree 
of approximation, giving rise to a frication or rustling 
which overpowers and makes subordinate the tone-ele- 
ment, and is itself plain and distinctive enough, whether 
made with tone or with breath, produces a pair of frica- 
tives, spirants, the German ch of ich, pech, etc., and its 
corresponding sonant (which is a very rare constituent 
of the alphabet) : we may write them kA and gh. Then 
follow, by complete closure, the intonated and uninto- 
nated mutes g and k. Thus we have a palatal series a, 
@, e, t, gh-kh, g-k.4 


1 If any one insists that y is closer than 7, and to be distinguished from tha 


THE RELATION OF VOWEL AND CONSONANT. 283 


If, again, from the same open position of a, we round 
and protrude the lips a very little, the result is the a of 
all (A); and further degrees of the same action give 0 
and uw. Here the zis the closest tone-sound or vowel; 
a complete closure of the already closely approximated 
lips gives the pair of mutes p and 0; and intermediate 
between the two lies the pair of purely labial spirants 
(see above, p. 256); which, in order to distinguish them 
from our nearly related dentilabial spirants, f and v, we 
may (with Ellis’s ‘‘ Palzeotype’’) represent by ph and bh. 
The labial series, then, will be a, 4, 0, u,? bh-ph, b-p. 

These two, I maintain, are real series throughout, and 
no schematic arrangement of the alphabet can be ac- 
cepted as satisfactory which does not present them as 
such. ‘They are wont to be so presented, as far as to the 
é and w respectively, in the vowel triangle or pyramid, 
already spoken of. But why stop at these limits? As 
regards their articulating position, there is no greater 
difference between 7 and gh, between u and bh, than be- 
tween 7 and e, or w and 0, or between gh and g, bh and b; 
not so great as between either? or wand a. It is true 
that, in passing from 2 to gh, or from u to bh, we have to 
cross an important and well marked division-line — the 
line on the one side of which the tone or throat-product 
is the main audible element, while on the other side of it 
the friction of the expelled column of air against the ob- 
stacles that so nearly confine it is the main audible ele- 
ment. But the line is not on that account anything 
more than a mark of division in a series, like the equally 
well marked one which separates the fricatives from the 
explosive sounds, or mutes. It simply represents the un- 
deniable truth that, with the same organs, approxima- 
latter, he may insert it between 7 and gh-kh in the series : so far as the matter 
here under discussion is concerned, the result is the same. 

1 See the preceding article (p. 213) for the question as to a supplementary ac- 


tion in the throat in the formation of these letters. 
2 Here a w may be inserted by those who choose, asa y in the palatal series. 


284 THE RELATION OF VOWEL AND CONSONANT. 


tion short of a certain degree produces vowels, and be- 
yond a certain degree produces consonants ; and it joins 
not less than it separates ; while it holds the two classes 
apart, it at the same time combines them into one system. 

Besides the two series, composed of vowels and conso- 
nants, which have been already described in detail, the 
ordinary alphabets contain another, of a more prevail- 
ingly consonantal character. It is produced by the tip of 
the tongue, seeking approach and contact with the roof 
of the mouth in its forward part. It contains, properly 
speaking, no vowels: as the tongue is turned up at the 
tip, and brought gradually toward the parts at or behind 
the upper front gums, no series of gradually changing 
tone-sounds is heard; but the dimmed a, the neutral 
vowel of but and burn (see above, p. 222), is an interme- 
diate of convenience ; and in English habit of utterance, 
especially, it bears such close relation to the 7 as almost 
to require to be ranked as a vowel standing between a 
and ry. When the approach is near enough, the r is 
generated ; and, as was explained in the foregoing article 
(above, p. 235), it may be either trilled or left smooth. 
The next degree of approach, at the same place and with 
the same organs, gives rise to a fricative sound, a 2 (or, 
if far enough back in the mouth, a zh), in which the 
rustling or buzzing is very conspicuous, and which has, 
like gh and bh, its surd counterpart, s (or sh). And 
complete closure produces the pair of mutes ¢ and d. 
But the tip of the tongue generates two sounds of its 
own openest class: the 7, uttered with the tongue closed 
at the sides and open at the tip; and the J, uttered with 
the tongue open at the sides and closed at the tip. The 
mutual convertibility of these two sounds in the his- 
tory of language is a familiar fact, nor would any one 
think of putting them into different classes. Though 
not vowels, they are also not properly fricatives; they 
are the openest, most resonant, and most continuable, of 


THE RELATION OF VOWEL AND CONSONANT. 285 


all the consonantal sounds; they have not, like the sonant 
fricatives and mutes, their surd counterparts, employable 
with equal frequency and freedom for the uses of articu- 
late speech. No name is so applicable to them as that of 
semivowels, by which they are also most frequently 
called: they do, in fact, stand as nearly as possible 
upon the division-line between vowels and consonants. 
Whether, in their production, the part taken by the 
throat or by the mouth-organs should be regarded as 
predominant, seems to me a debatable question; I 
should not dare to say with confidence whether there is 
in them more tone or more form. Hence their special 
capacity of being employed as vowels, and their frequent 
appearance in that character. The use of J as vowel in 
English has been sufficiently considered already (above, 
p- 233) ; and the reason has also been noticed why r is 
differently treated with us. The Sanskrit furnishes the 
readiest exemplification of a vocalic r. The sound may 
stand with that value in any situation, not being re- 
stricted, like / in our speech, to unaccented syllables: it 
receives the accent, as in karmakr’t ; it is the sole vowel 
of a word, as in Ard ; it forms an initial syllable, as in 7-tu. 

The lingual series, then, is [a, a, 7] 7-1, 2-s, d-t. 

There is yet another class of sounds, the nasals, whose 
relations to the other classes, and their consequent posi- 
tion in the alphabetic system, require a little special dis- 
cussion. As regards the position assumed by the mouth- 
organs in their utterance, they stand upon the footing of 
full mutes, the closure of the oral passage being com- 
plete. They are far, however, from being mute sounds, 
because in pronouncing them the nasal passages are open, 
and this circumstance gives them no small degree of open- 
ness, resonance, and continuability. Their classification, 
then, is not to be determined by their mouth-position 
alone — which would rank them with the mutes — but by 
their general character. And this places them next to 


286. THE RELATION OF VOWEL AND CONSONANT. 


the semivowels, between the latter and the fricatives. 
For, in the first place, they are, like the semivowels, capa- 
ble of employment with the value of vowels; and one of 
them, the n, is actually so employed in our language (see 
above, p. 233). And, in the second place, they haye not, 
like fricatives and mutes, each of them its own surd coun- 
terpart: they share, rather, with the vowels and semi- 
vowels the possession of 2 as common surd. An f has 
fully as good a right in the alphabet as a v, an s asaz,a 
kas ag: but the surd expirations through the positions of 


mand n, as through those of / and r, of y and w, of a and 


2 and u, are too little different to be worth distinguishing, 
and we should write Ana and Ama, just as hla or hra, 
as hyu (hue) and hwen (when), as harp and heap and 
hoop. ‘These characteristics sufficiently prove that the 
contact and its closure or unclosure are in the nasals an 
element of only inferior and subordinate value. 

The sounds which we have thus discussed will, when 
arranged according to the relations we have noted as be- 
longing to them, form the following scheme : — 


a 
& A - \ Vowels. 
Py t é oO 
onant. ¢ re] Ub 
i] r,t w Semivowels. 
ng d n m Nasals. 
Surd. Aspiration. g 
Sonant. gh 2 bh iyi: S 
tale} kh A p h Fricatives. E 
Sonant. g d b j 
onant. . 
Surd. k t ; Mae 
Palatal Lingual Labial 
Series. Series. Series. 


Such an arrangment as this exhibits, I am fully per- 
suaded, more of the relations, both. physical and histori- 
cal, of the alphabetic sounds, and exhibits them more 
truly, than any other which can be devised, and upon it as 


THE RELATION OF VOWEL AND CONSONANT. 287 


a basis the alphabets of different languages may be most 
advantageously compared and judged. In the preceding 
article (p. 272) I have given, upon the same plan, a fuller 
scheme, embracing all the sounds which make up the En- 
glish alphabet. 

* Upon the principal point involved in it, however, the 
definition of vowel and consonant in their relations to one 
another, I desire to dwell longer, in order to test its ne- 
cessity and practical availability. 

That some new definition of a consonant is called for 
seems clearly enough indicated by the discordance and in- 
definiteness and insufficiency of the definitions hitherto 
furnished by phonetists. To Professor Max Miiller, for 
example,! vowels are tones, and consonants merely noises. 
Of the latter he speaks as follows : — 

‘¢ All consonants fall under the category of noises, and there are 
certain noises that could hardly be avoided even in a language which 
was meant to consist of vowels only. If we watch any musical in- 
struments, we can easily perceive that their sounds are always pre- 
ceded by certain noises, arising from the first impulses imparted to 
the air before it can produce really musical sensations. We hear 
the puffing and panting of the siren, the scratching of the violin, the 
hammering of the pianoforte, the spitting of the flute. The same in 
speaking. If we send out our breath, intending it to be vocalized, 
we hear the rushing out, the initial impulse produced by the inner 
air as it reaches the outer.” 


This is all that Miiller offers upon the subject, and any 
one can see at a glance how barren of instruction it is. 
To compare consonants, those essential and characteristic 
parts of our articulate speech, with the unmusical noises of 
musical instruments, which are overborne and silenced 
altogether in good execution, is palpably futile. What is 
there in the 6 and 7, the » and d, of blend, for instance, 
to assimilate them to such noises? Are they, or any 
other of the twenty or thirty consonants which may 


1 Lectures, second series, third lecture: p. 1389 of the American edition, 138 
of the sixth (altered) English edition. 


288 THE RELATION OF VOWEL AND CONSONANT. 


gather in groups, even to the number of five or six at 
once, about each of the vowels, in the least degree de- 
pendent for their being on the latter, or generated by it? 
Is not each one as distinct a product of the voluntary ac- 
tion of the articulating organs, consciously directed to its 
production, as is the vowel itself? Is there any difficulty 
in uttering a clear vowel, free from such prefatory (or 
sequent) appendages? And are those sounds entitled to 
the appellation of noises only, as distinguished from 
tones, which can themselves —as is the case especially 
with the opener consonants — be indefinitely prolonged 
and musically intoned? The asserted analogy fails of 
application in every particular. ° 

Dr. Briicke of Vienna, than whom no German pho- 
netist enjoys a higher reputation and more consideration 
as an authority, explains the distinction of vowel and 

consonant as follows:! “In all consonants, there takes 

place somewhere in the mouth-canal a closure, or a con- 
traction which gives rise to a plainly audible and self-sub- 
sistent rustling, which is independent of the tone of the 
voice ; while in the vowels neither of these things is the 
case.” . , 

To the correctness of this statement less exception is to 
be taken than to its character as a sufficient definition. 
It appears to me hardly entitled to be regarded as a defi- 
nition at all: it is rather a. catalogue, a specification of 
the two principal sub-classes into which consonants are 
divided, and a description of their respective characteris- 
tics. Some consonants, it declares, are produced by a com- 
plete closure of the mouth-organs, others by such an ap- 
proximation of them as gives rise to an audible rustling. 
The specification, however, is not quite exhaustive. The 
nasals — or “ resonants,” as Dr. Briicke, with much rea- 
son, prefers to call them —are too unlike the mutes to be 
included in one sub-class with them, and they involve no 


1 Grundziige der Physiologie und Systematik der Sprachlaute (Wien, 1856), 
p- 29. 


THE RELATION OF VOWEL AND CONSONANT. 289 


audible rustling dependent on a contraction of the mouth- 
eanal. All the three sub-classes, then — of mutes, reso- 
nants, and fricatives— should have been enumerated as 
making up the class of consonants; and our account of 
the alphabetic system would be virtually this: sounds 
possessing such and such characteristics, of three kinds, 
are consonants; the rest, not possessing any of them, are 
vowels. This is surely a superficial account of the mat- 
ter. What common characteristic belongs to our conso- 
nantal subdivisions, combining them into a class together, 
and distinguishing them from the vowels? Why do we 
set up the vowels as a distinct grand division of the 
alphabet, and not as well, for example, the mutes: saying, 
The alphabet is divided into mutes and non-mutes; the 
non-mutes being continuable sounds, and accompanied 
with the expulsion of breath through either the lips or the 
nose ; the mutes implying the closure of both, and being 
explosive only ? And if the superior practical value of 
the distinction of vowels and consonants were pleaded, 
we should allege the convertibility of 7 and % into conso- 
nants, and of J, 7, » into vowels, as facts which find no 
explanation whatever in Dr. Briicke’s definition of a con- 
sonant.! 

Mr. A. M. Bell, again, the eminent author of * Visible 
Speech,” ? gives in that work (pp. 12, 18) an account 
of vowel and consonant which seems more nearly to im- 
ply the distinction as I have laid it down. He says: 
‘In forming consonants, the breath or voice is stopped or 
squeezed, with an effect of percussion, sibilation, buzzing, 
or vibration, in some part of the guttural or oral passage ; 


1 Lepsius, in his Standard Alphabet, gives the usual vowel-pyramid, though 
without any explanation of the reasons on which it is founded, and treats the 
consonants as a separate system, not attempting to define the distinction or rela- 
tion of the two systems ; and later (in Jour. Am. Oriental Soc. viii. 340, 1865) 
he insists upon the separation, but still without explaining himself as to the 
subject. 

2 See the next article. 

19 


290 THE RELATION OF VOWEL AND CONSONANT. 


and in forming vowels, the breath or voice flows through 
similar but more open and ‘fixed’ configurations, which 
merely shape or mould the breath, without impeding its 
emission.” But the quality of ‘more open” configura- 
tion, ascribed here to the vowel, is made uncertain and 
unclear by being combined with ‘“fixedness;”’ and I 
gather that the author regards this latter as the more 
essential part of his definition, for Mr. Peile + quotes from 
another work of his the definition ‘‘ a vowel is the result 
of an open position of the oral organs; an articulation 
[z. e. consonant] is the result of an opening action of the 
organ.” I cannot see that this distinction is a tenable 
one, as applied to the consonants in general; there are 
plenty among them —as f, s, th, ng— which are capable 
of being indefinitely prolonged without losing their con- 
sonantal character, and only the surd mutes are absolutely 
instantaneous. And Mr. Bell is involved in other diffi- 
culties, as to the occasional vocalic value of consonants 
and the theory of syllabication,? by the same faulty 
definition. 

It is, indeed, by its capability of being applied to ex- 
plain the nature of the syllable that the value of any 
definition of vowel and consonant must be tried; since 
the terms vowel and consonant themselves have signifi- 
eance only in their relation to the syllable. Consonant 
means ‘sounding along with ’ — that is, ‘ with’ a letter 
of the other class,a vowel. By this is not at all intended, 
however, that a consonant cannot be uttered except in 
combination with a vowel: every consonant can be so 
uttered ; the semivowels and fricatives are continuable 
sounds, not less than the vowels; and even the mutes 
may be made distinctly audible by explosion with breath 
alone, with a mere puff of unarticulated air. The epithet 
is a historical one, not a theoretical. In the actual usage 


1 In his Introduction to Greek and Latin Etymology, second edition, p. 57. 
2 They are pointed out in the next article, at p. 309 seg. - - 


THE RELATION OF VOWEL AND CONSONANT. 291 


of language, consonants never do occur independently ; no 
word is composed of consonants alone. The same is true 
of the lesser entities into which part of our words are 
divided, namely syllables ; every syllable also must con- 
tain a vowel — either a sound that is always a vowel, or 
one here doing duty as such; and a word contains as 
many syllables as it contains vowels. What, then, is a 
syllable; and what the real phonetic distinction between 
a monosyllabic and a polysyllabic combination of sounds ? 

The ordinary definition of a syllable, repeated over and 
over in grammars and orthographical or orthoépical trea- 
tises, is or amounts to this: a syllable is that part of a 
word which is uttered by a single effort or impulse of the 
voice. Such an account of the matter is of only the 
smallest value. Just as much is a word of many syllables, 
or a whole sentence, uttered by a single effort of the 
voice, when the speaker knows beforehand what he is 
going to say, and says it at once in conscious connection. 
It takes a certain amount of instruction and reflection to 
recognize a word as composed of separate syllables. The 
speaker unused to examine and theorize about what he 
says puts it forth without any thought of analyzing it 
into parts, without feeling asuccession of efforts as neces- 
sary to the enunciation of the separate syllables, any 
more than of the separate letters. Indeed, even upon re- 
flection, it is much more proper to speak of the letters 
than of the syllables as formed by so many efforts of 
enunciation. We are far from realizing the number, 
complexity, and exactness of the movements that go on 
in our mouths in the process of utterance. Let us look, 
for example, at the word blend. ‘Though syllabically a 
unit, it is a unit of a highly composite character ; for its 
production, the organs of the mouth change their positions 
five times, by as many separate efforts of the will. First, 
with the lips closed, a little breath is forced up from the 
lungs into the closed cavity of the mouth, and intonated 


292, THE RELATION OF VOWEL AND CONSONANT. 


on its way through the larynx by being made to set the 
vocal cords in vibration. ‘This lasts but for the briefest 
moment; before the cavity is filled so as to stop the expul- 
sion, the lips are unclosed, and 6 is heard. At the same in- 
stant, the tongue has been made to touch the roof of the 
mouth at its tip, while the unintermitted current of sonant 
breath streams out at its sides, giving the /-sound. Next, 
the tongue changes its position ; its point is released from 
-eontact and depressed in the mouth, resting against the 
lower teeth ; its upper flat surface approaches the palate, 
and the e makes itself audible. Once more the tongue 
shifts place; its tip is again applied as in forming the J ; 
but this time no opening is left at the side; contact along 
its whole length prohibits all emission of air through the 
mouth ; but the passage from the mouth through the 
nose, hitherto closed, is thrown open, and the stream 
finds exit there: and the sound isn. And lastly, with 
no change of place on the part of any of the other organs, 
the passage into the nose is shut again; the intonated 
breath is expelled a moment longer into the closed cavity 
of the mouth, and the syllable is closed with a d — which, 
however, if not followed by another utterance, requires a 
supplemental unclosure of the organs in order to be made 
distinctly audible. All these changes, which it has taken 
so long to describe, are performed with such rapidity and 
precision, one position of the organs succeeds another 
so closely and accurately, that no. intermediate. transi- 
tional sounds, no “ glides,” are apprehended by the ear; 
it hears the five utterances and nothing more. In what 
true sense, now, can this complicated process be called a 
single effort of the voice? One element of unity, it is 
true, there is in the word: from its beginning to its end, 
there has been an uninterrupted emission of intonated 
breath through the larynx. But, in the first place, this 
is not necessary in order to make the unity of a syllable: 
strength is also a single syllable, composed of six different 


THE RELATION OF VOWEL AND CONSONANT. 293. 


sounds ; but the intonation begins with the third element, 
7, and continues only through the fourth and fifth, e and 
ng; the first two, s and ¢, and the sixth, th, are produced 
with breath unintonated. In the second place, unbroken 
continuity of intonation does not suffice to make syllabic 
unity ; the word any, for example, requires but three 
successive positions of the organs of articulation, and is 
intonated or sonant from beginning to end; yet it is a 
word of two syllables... And we might take the self-same 
elements of which blend is composed, and rearrange them 
into combinations which should be dissyllabic: thus, dledn 
(like deaden) and bendl (like bundle). 

The governing principle, it seems plain to me, which 
determines these and all other like cases, is that same 
antithesis of opener and closer sounds upon which the 
distinction of vowel and consonant is founded. ‘The 
vowel elements of any are practically identical with those 
which compose our € (the “long a” of they: it has, as 
explained in the preceding article, a “‘ vanish ” of 7) ; and 
é may be protracted so as to occupy the whole time of 
any, without giving the impression of more than a single 
syllable ; but put between the two opener vowel elements 
the closer consonantal n, and the effect is to divide them 
into two parts: the ear apprehends the series of utter- 
ances as a double impulse of sound. So in lap there are 
three articulated elements, of three different degrees of 
closeness; but the @ (@) is so much more open than 
either of the others that they are felt only as its intro- 
ductory and closing appendages; there is a crescendo- 
diminuendo effect, but no violation of unity. And alp 
and pla, in like manner, are a crescendo and diminuendo 
respectively, equally without dual character. But apl 
(i. e. apple) is two opener sounds separated by a closer, 
and the effect is distinctly dual ; and pa is fully capable 
of assuming the same character (like the Sanskrit word 
r-tu, quoted above), if only we were accustomed to 
making such combinations, 


294 THE RELATION OF VOWEL AND CONSONANT. 


Syllabic effect, then, depends upon this: that, among 
the articulations of which any pronounceable series is 
composed, there are some whith are so much more open 
and more sonorous than the rest that they make upon the 
ear the impression of distinct phonetic impulses, separated 
and at the same time connected by the closer utterances 
which come between them. The distinction of syllables 
is more in the ear of the hearer than in the mouth of the 
speaker; the articulating organs are engaged, in the 
enunciation of a word or phrase, in an unintermitted 
series of changes of position, from the first letter to the 
last, and are conscious of no relaxation of effort ; the ear 
apprehends the products of the different positions as so 
many successive entities, but also at once classifies them, 
arranging them in separate groups, in which the closer 
sounds are subordinated to the opener. 

Not, indeed, that the impression of divided parts is 
capable of being given only in this way. An instant of 
silence, a hiatus, is equally effective. Take, for ex- 
ample, the 7-sound, and prolong it through the time of 
seven ordinary syllables, and it is but a single long syl- 
lable ; utter it seven times in quick succession, and it 
becomes seven 7’s, seven syllables; speak ¢ndivisebdility, 
and, though the utterance is one continuous effort, the 
seven-fold effect, the division into seven syllables, is 
equally conspicuous.! 


1 [ neglect here, as unessential, the fact that, in our ordinary pronunciation 
of this word, the fourth and sixth syllables would receive the neutral vowel- 
sound. We may represent the three effects rudely to the eye in the following 
manner: — 


VII 
W)\/) Aw 4 
> DLL 


This graphical method may be profitably employed in considerable detail in 


the illustration of the combination of articulate elements, and of syllabica- 
tion. 


Y 


THE RELATION OF VOWEL AND CONSONANT. 295 


Herein, above all, lies the peculiar character of our 
speech as articulated, jointed, broken up into distinct yet 
flexible members. It would be possible to have a lan- 
guage of mere vowel utterances, tones, which should fol- 
low and blend with one another in a manner not wholly 
wanting in articulate effect, yet possessing it only un- 
clearly — rather, flexible without articulation, like a rope 
or rod. It would be possible also to have a language of 
consonants only, of mutes and fricatives and nasals. But 
both would be greatly deficient, as compared with the 
language we actually use, in distinctness, in euphony, in 
variety, in the qualities which make utterance the ser- 
viceable representative and instrument of thought. The 
one would be sing-song ; the other would be sputter ; the 
due combination of the two is the universal articulate 
speech of men; everywhere alike in general character, 
notwithstanding its great and numerous differences in dif- 
ferent communities, as regards both the articulate sounds 
employed and the proportion and manner of their com- 
bination. 

Into the details of these differences, of the construc- 
tion of syllables as practiced and tolerated in various 
languages, our present purpose does not require us to- 
enter. I will only remark that, when it comes to allot- 
ting to the one or the other syllable the closer sounds 
which intervene between the opener, there is room for 
much difference of opinion — partly because one opinion 
is as good as another, and the question is to be settled 
by practical convenience rather than by principle. Thus, 
for example, in any, the intervention of the n between 
the two vowels makes the dissyllable; but the itself 
belongs as much to the one syllable as to the other: 
whether we should write an-y (én-1) or a-ny (€-ni) is a 
matter of indifference. There is, on the other hand, 
more reason for assigning the p of apple (a-pl) to the sec- 
ond syllable, because (as was pointed out above, p. 242) 


296 THE RELATION OF VOWEL AND CONSONANT. 


the breach of the closure of the p by the following vowel 
is much more sensible to the ear than the formation of 
its closure upon the preceding vowel. 

Now, in the system of spoken sounds, there are some 
which are of so close position, so little clear and resonant, 
that they are never used save as consonants : that is, they 
appear in actual speech only as combined in the same 
syllable with opener sounds. Such are, above all, the 
- mutes ; and the two classes of fricatives, the spirants and 
sibilants, are in a like case. We may utter or reiterate 
av, ath, an s, a zh, as much as we please; we shall not 
succeed in making upon any ear the impression of sylla- 
bles. Although the mode of formation of the sibilants 
is such as to allow of their easy and frequent prefixion 
or affixion to other consonants, of every class (that is, 
according to our habits of utterance ; there are languages 
which would regard all such combinations as unpro- 
nounceable), they are not syllabic, even when separated 
from a vowel by full contact-letters. Whatever force and 
quantity we may give to the hissing sound in tacks, adze, 
stain, sky, we cannot make the words into dissyllables. 
While the / of draggled is just as distinctly a vowel as 
the e of draggeth, nothing that we can do will confer the 
same value on the s of drag’st, though its position, 
between two mutes, is the most favorable that can be 
devised for the development of vocalic capacity. On the 
contrary, the power possessed by the semivowels and 
nasals — especially by 1, 7, —4n virtue of their superior 
degree of openness and resonance, to assume vocalic 
value and office under favoring circumstances, has been 
already sufficiently pointed out and illustrated ; and we 
have here only to notice in addition that even then they 
are not always inevitably vocalic; as affixes even to a 
mute, a certain amount of stress and quantity is required 
to make vowels of them; they may be so abbreviated 
and slighted, so subordinated to the preceding syllable, 


THE RELATION OF VOWEL AND CONSONANT. 297 


as to form to the ear only a harsh and difficult con- 
sonantal appendage to that syllable. So in French, 
in the prose pronunciation of such words as_ sabre, 
table, where the “‘ mute e”’ is really mute, and the words 
are monosyllables. While predominantly consonantal, 
they have so much vocalic quality as this: that they are 
capable of receiving, and in certain situations do receive, 
in many languages, without any change of articulate 
form, the full office of -a vowel in making syllables. 

The same thing, in its way, is true of the vowels also. 
There are among them sounds so open that they are al- 
ways vowels, never occupying the position of adjuncts in 
the same syllable to another sound which is apprehended 
as the vowel of the syllable. Such is especially a; and 
e and o are of the same character. But 7 and wu, in their 
closest form, become y and w on being abbreviated and 
slighted in utterance ; to maintain their vocalic character, 
they require something of that protraction and stress . 
which, on occasion, give the vocalic character to 7 and n. 
Put w and 7 side. by side, and whether their combination 
shall require to be written wi, or wi, or uy, will depend 
upon the force and time which are allotted to each re- 
spectively. Nor is it impossible, by an effort, to pro- 
nounce y and w with consonantal value after the some- 
what closer semivowels 7, 7 (in such combinations as ary, 
alw), in a manner truly analogous with sabre, table, as 
above instanced. 

The discussion of the syllable, therefore, while it shows 
the high practical importance of the distinction implied in 
the terms vowel and consonant, at the same time shows 
that distinction to be not absolute, but only a matter of 
degree and circumstance. Vowel and consonant are the 
two poles of a compound series, in which are included 
all the articulate sounds ordinarily employed by human 
beings for the purposes of speech. 

An additional reason for appreciating correctly the dis- 


298 THE RELATION OF VOWEL AND CONSONANT. 


tinction in question, and especially for arranging and 
regarding the whole alphabet as a series, is to be found 
in the light thus cast upon the historic development of the 
alphabet in the Indo-European family of languages. It 
is well known to all comparative philologists that a and 
the mutes were the greatly prevailing elements in the 
earliest speech of this family. That speech had no frica- 
tive except s; r and J were present, but probably undis- 
tinguished from one another; y and w were even less 
separate from 7 and uw than at present. So likewise in 
the vowel-system, the only elements besides a were 7 and 
u, at the farthest remove from it; and they were of 
vastly less common occurrence than a; in the Sanskrit, 
a still makes over seventy per cent. of the whole vowel 
utterance. It appears, then, that both in the alphabet as 
a whole and in its vocalic division, the sounds of extreme 
position, those most broadly and markedly distinguished 
from one another, were the first to be put to use; and 
the tendency has been to fill in the intermediate positions, 
to add the sounds of less differentiation. ‘There has been, 
as we may fairly express it, a progress made in the com- 
mand obtained over the organs of speech, whereby they 
have been enabled to do finer and nicer work. And, just 
as obviously, the movement of phonetic transition has 
been from the two extremities of the alphabet toward the 
middle: the opener vowels have been changed to closer, 
the closer consonants to opener ; only in special and ex- 
ceptional cases the opposite way. Now what has been 
the governing motive in all this development and transi- 
tion? The tendency to ease of utterance, is the common 
answer ; and doubtless, so far as it goes, the true one; 
only, when we come to ask further wherein lies the greater 
ease of the new sounds, we get no satisfactory reply, but 
rather a set of special pleadings: it is found in actual 
practice that such and such sounds do result from and 
succeed such and such others; and, as the tendency to 


THE RELATION OF VOWEL AND CONSONANT. 299 


ease is the only admissible explanation, the former must 
be easier than the latter. Hence the words light and 
heavy, hard and soft, strong and weak, and their like, are 
glibly employed and sagely pleaded as explanations by 
people who can give no intelligible account of what they 
mean, and, on attempting it, bring forward only what is 
arbitrary and indefensible. Boldly to declare f and v, for 
example, “ easier”’ than p and 6, on any ground of their 
physical difference, is open to the most serious objection. 
Certainly, young children find p and 6 the easier, and are 
apt to require considerable experience in speaking before 
they master the others. And it is not likely that the 
organs of the race in old time, any more than of each 
new member of it nowadays, would begin with producing 
the more difficult sounds, and would learn later by prac- 
tice to produce the easier ones. ‘The experience of other 
races seems to show the same thing: for, in human lan- 
guages in general, p and 6 are more frequent constituents 
of the alphabet than fand v. It is only when we take 
duly into account the antithesis of opener and closer 
sounds, and the constant and rapid transition from the 
one to the other in articulate utterance, in the formation 
of syllables, that we find an available principle. The 
transitions between very close and very open positions 
are longer and more difficult, they require a greater ex- 
penditure of muscular force, than those between more 
medial positions; this is (of course, unconsciously) 
learned by experience, and the organs gradually find out 
for themselves those medial positions. What is easier to 
the practiced speaker, in the rapid combinations of the 
phrase, becomes thus the norm of speech: sounds come 
into being which are harder for the child, but which he 
by degrees learns to produce, after the example of those 
whose experience has suggested their advantage. The 
general stream of utterance is narrowed, and the divisions 
by which it is broken into joints are made less penetrat- 


300 THE RELATION OF VOWEL AND CONSONANT. 


ing and separating. Or, as we may express it, the con- 
sonants and vowels become to acertain extent assimilated 
to one another: the consonant is vocalized, or receives 
an opener position ; and the vowel is consonantized, or 
receives a closer position. Something of the distinctness 
of articulated utterance is thus sacrificed ; the ruggedness 
of strong contrasts is exchanged for smoother and more 
flexible transitions ; grace is won at the expense of force. 
The process may be carried so far as to amount to an 
emasculation of the audible part of language : how far it 
has actually gone in English, the numerical estimates 
given at the end of the preceding article, if taken in com- 
parison with similar estimates made for other languages, 
ancient and modern, will give us the means of deter- 
mining. 


Pe 
BELL'S VISIBLE SPEECH? 


—_¢— 


Or the many attempts at an exact physical analysis and 
description of the processes of articulate utterance, and 
their complete and consistent representation in an alpha- 
bet, no one has come before the English-speaking public 
with such claims as this. Its author, who has long been 
an esteemed elocutionist and trainer of the voice in Lon- 
don, exhibits perfect confidence in it, and unbounded 
expectation of results to be accomplished by it. The 
degree of his faith is shown by the offer —a liberal one, 
from his point of view, and creditable to his disinterest- 
edness and patriotism — made by him to the British gov- 
ernment, to give up the advantage which he might expect 
to draw from its copyright, and present it freely to the 
nation, if the government, on its side, would bear the ex- 
pense of the inaugural publication, and enable him for a 
time to act as public teacher of the system, thus intro- 
ducing it more rapidly and thoroughly to general cur- 
rency. The proposal was not accepted; red tape, if 
nothing else, was in the way; the Ministry declared itself 
to be in possession of no funds which were available for 

14. Visible Speech: the Science of Universal Alphabets; or, Self-interpret- 
ing Physiological Letters, for the Writing of all Languages in one Alphabet. 
Illustrated by Tables, Diagrams, and Examples. By Alex. Melville Bell, 
F. E. I. S., F. R. 8S. S. A., Professor of Vocal Physiology, etc., etc. Inau- 
gural Edition. London: Simpkins, Marshall, & Co. 1867. 4to. Pp. 126, 
and 16 plates. 

2. English Visible Speech for the Million; for communicating the exact 


Pronunciation of the Language to Native or Foreign Learners, and for teach- 
ing Children and Illiterate Adults to read in a few days. By the same. 4to. 


Pp. 16. 


302 | BELL'S VISIBLE SPEECH. 


such a purpose. Mr. Bell details the course and end of 
the negotiation in his introductory chapter, confident that 
his readers will lament with him the narrowness of a 
policy which could suffer such an opportunity to pass 
unimproved. Still, we are too much used to the sight of 
inventors aggrieved by the stolid indifference of govern- 
ments and communities to the transcendent merits of 
their pet devices, to be won over to Mr. Bell’s side on 
his own showing alone. But he is strongly backed by 
supporters of high rank and unimpeachable character. 
More than one much-esteemed authority in phonetic sci- 
ence, inventors of alphabetic schemes which the new sys- 
tem comes to rival and supplant, have given it, with 
praiseworthy candor and liberality, their unqualified in- 
dorsement. Among these, our countryman, Professor 
Haldeman, and Mr. Alexander J. Ellis, especially the 
latter, are conspicuous. Hardly any other English writer 
upon such themes, if any, has won so high a reputation 
as Mr. Ellis; and when he declares that, having in view 
not only his own investigations, but also those of the 
principal Continental scholars, whom he names, he yet is 
obliged to say that he had no knowledge of alphabetics as 
a science until he was made acquainted with Mr. Bell’s 
system, and that he unequivocally abandons his own in 
its favor, we see that it is at least deserving of the most 
careful examination. Mr. Bell further rests its merits 
upon the results of practical experiments undertaken with 
it, and described in his book by Mr. Ellis and other dis- 
interested persons. They were conducted after the fol- 
lowing fashion. A number of gentlemen — philologists, 
foreigners, men acquainted with strange tongues, or 
strange dialects of familiar tongues— were assembled at 
Mr. Bell’s rooms, and dictated to him a series of speci- 
mens of languages unknown to him — specimens made in 
part as idiomatic in character and difficult of reproduc- 
tion as possible. These he wrote carefully down in his 


BELL’S VISIBLE SPEECH. 303 


alphabet. His sons, who had had a few weeks’ training 
in the use of the system, were now called in, and the 
records placed before them, and the young men read them 
off almost immediately, with the most surprising faith- 
fulness, appearing to reproduce each articulation, tone, 
and peculiarity of utterance, precisely as it had been 
originally given. No other alphabet that was ever de- 
vised, so far as we know, could have stood such a test as 
this: none, in fact, has ever attempted so comprehensive 
a task. For there is nothing uttered by human organs 
which Mr. Bell does not claim to represent with equal 
fidelity. In the pages of his book we find the written 
equivalents, along with articulate sounds, of sighs, groans, 
sobs, coughs, sneezes, hiccoughs, laughs, chuckles, kisses, 
sneers, hems and haws, etc.; nay, he even attempts an 
imitation of the noise of grinding, and of planing and 
sawing wood. At the same time, the means resorted to 
are simple and easily learned. Their peculiarity consists 
in their being throughout representatives of physical acts. 
Kach sign, or element of a compound sign, indicates a 
position or act of the organs of utterance, and is founded 
upon an ingenious and natural symbolism. After a thor- 
ough preliminary study, therefore, the system of char- 
acters is self-interpreting; and it is sufficiently broad and 
extensible to be capable of depicting to the eye every- 
thing, or nearly everything, which the voice of man can 
utter to the ear. It is a universal alphabet, resting on a 
true and solid basis ; it renders speech visible. 

If all these claims are well founded, every one can see 
that Mr. Bell’s alphabet ought to be made known as soon 
and as widely as possible; and whether they are so, is 
the question we propose to discuss here. Of course, in 
the space at our command, and without the type repre- 
senting Mr. Bell’s characters, we cannot, by any means, 
treat the subject in all its parts and all its relations ; but 
perhaps enough can be said to give our readers the means 


804 . BELL’S VISIBLE SPEECH. 


of forming a tolerably clear and correct opinion respect- 
ing it. 

There are obviously three principal points to which 
our inquiries must be directed: first, is Mr. Bell’s phys- 
ical analysis complete and accurate ? second, is his system 
of written characters plain and convenient? and third, 
supposing both these questions to be answered in the af- 
firmative, what is the practical value of the deyice, its 
sphere of profitable application? Without attempting 
to take up the points stated in systematic order, we will 
endeavor to keep them all distinctly in view. 

Our examination of our author’s alphabet will beat 
begin with the consonants, since they are the vastly easier 
part to be dealt with of the system of articulate sounds, 
their mode of production being, for the most part, within 
reach of our observation, when a little trained and prac- 
ticed, of our own organs of utterance. 

The fundamental consonant symbol chosen by Mr. Bell 
is a curve open on one side—a C. ‘This typifies an ob- 
struction to the free passage of the breath, effected within 
the oral cavity by the approximation of the mouth-organs 
—of tongue and palate, or of lip and lip. In the po- 
sition of a C, it signifies an approach of the back part of 
the tongue to the soft palate, such as produces the Ger- 
man sound of ch in ach; turned over, with the curve up, 
a like approach of a point on the forward surface of the 
tongue (Mr. Bell gives it the technical name of ‘ front’) 
to the neighboring hard palate, producing the German eh- 
sound in ich; with the curve turned under, the near ap-. 
plication of the point of the tongue behind the teeth ; 
with the curve to the right, the approach of lip to lip. . 
If the opening of the curve is closed by a straight line 
drawn across its ends, complete closure of the organs, 
forming a surd mute, is intimated; in the C-position, a 
k; in the ©-position, a ¢; in the O-position, a p. These 
are made sonant, or converted respectively into g, d, 6, 


BELL'S VISIBLE SPEECH. 305 


by a line drawn from the middle of the curve within, to- 
wards its opening; such a line symbolizing here, as else- 
where, that position of the vocal cords in which sonant 
utterance is produced. Once more, the same characters 
are made nasal, signs for ng, n, m, by substituting for the 
straight closing line a bent one, closing only at one end, 
to represent the uvula, whose pendency opens the channel 
from the mouth to the nostrils. Here are already sixteen 
letters of the new alphabet, in part standing for the 
sounds most common in all languages, of most distinct 
formation and easiest systematic representation; no ex- 
eeption can be taken to them in any way. But the foun- 
dation-sign admits two further modifications, in connec- 
tion with which certain weaknesses appear. In the first 
place, by indenting the consonantal curve at its back (like 
a figure 3), Mr. Bell typifies a close contact of the organs 
along the middle line of closure, with passage left for the 
breath at the sides. Of sounds so formed, our J is the 
model, being produced, as every one has noticed, by an 
application of the tip of the tongue to the roof of the 
mouth, while the intonated breath finds exit on both sides 
of the contact; and with our author’s designation of this 
sound, as well as of the palatal J, its next of kin, no fault 
can be found. When, however, we are asked to believe 
that our th-sounds (in thin and then), and our f and v, 
are of the same quality — sounds of central closure and 
lateral opening —and therefore to be written with anal- 
ogous characters, we at once demur, and begin to suspect 
that our author is not incapable of being misled into 
wrongly apprehending and falsely describing the forma- 
tion of spoken letters by the facility of thus finding for 
them a ready place in his system. We are as sure as we 
can wish to be that the quality claimed for these sounds 
in no wise belongs to them ; nor has it been ascribed to 
them, so far as we are aware, by any previous authority. 


But Mr. Bell’s signs for th involve, we think, another 
20 


306 : BELL’S VISIBLE SPEECH. 


false element, which they share with the sibilant signs. 
By attaching, namely, recurved ends to his funda- 
mental consonant character, he intimates a mixture of 
the main articulation with its opposite; and sounds of 
such mixed articulation, according to him, are our s and 
sh, the former produced mainly by the “front” of the 
tongue, but with aid from the tip; the latter, by the tip of 
the tongue, with aid from the front. Here, certainly, he is 
-incontestably wrong ; the essential character of these two 
sounds is due to a near approximation of the tongue to 
two points on the front palate ; their difference, to the 
different situation of the-two points, that for s being far- 
ther forward ; it is comparatively a matter of indifference 
whether they be produced by the point or the front of the 
tongue ; and when we form them, as we may, with either 
point or front, the other part has nothing whatever to do 
with them ; we may envelop the point, for example, or 
push it away from its ordinary position, by artificial 
means, without at all affecting the character of the artic- 
ulation.! 

This same character of ‘“‘ mixture’ —namely, of the 
front and point of the tongue —is attributed by Mr. Bell 
to the th-sounds. In fact, his signs for th and s differ 
only by the curve of the former being ‘ divided,” or 
modified to show central closure. The real distinction 
between the two, however, is, that the s is produced just 
back of the teeth, at a point where a close contact, giy- 
ing a t,1is possible; while the th is the closest contact - 
which can be formed between the tongue and the teeth 
themselves.” . 

If there are any sounds in our spoken alphabet which 
ought to be distinctly recognized as ‘‘ mixed,” they are 
our usual f and v, and the th, since these bring into action 
the teeth, a set of organs which are not elsewhere directly 
active. Mr. Bell’s system, however, provides no sign for 


1 See above, p. 258. 2 See above, p. 253. 


BELL’S VISIBLE SPEECH. 307 


such mixture as this. The th, accordingly, he treats as 
we have just seen; and, in his ordinary designation of f 
and v, he takes no notice of their being otherwise than 
purely labial. 

There are other points in our author’s scheme of conso- 
nants where we deem him wrong in theory and unsuc- 
cessful in designation ; but we cannot dwell upon them. 
We have picked out the most palpable errors — enough 
to show, as we think, that his alphabet, even upon this 
side, is open to serious objection ; that it is not, as he 
claims, the complete and undistorted reflection to the eye 
of the physical processes of utterance, but does violence 
to nature, both by introducing symbols for unreal acts, 
and by omitting to symbolize others having a real exist- 
ence and importance. 

We come, then, with an unfavorable presumption 
against Mr. Bell’s absolute accuracy to the examination 
of what he has done for the infinitely more difficult the- 
ory of the vowels. His vowel system has a general anal- 
ogy with his consonant system. He assumes three 
fundamental positions of the tongue — one with its back 
part, one with its front, one with both back and front, 
brought toward the palate; and three degrees of ap- 
proach, “ high,” ‘* mid,” and ‘“ low,” for each of the three 
positions, ‘‘front,’ ‘back,’ and ‘ mixed.” Each of 
these nine configurations he doubles, by applying to it the 
‘rounding ”’ action of the lips; each of these eighteen he 
. doubles again, by claiming that two different sounds are 
given forth through any ‘ configurative aperture,” ac- 
cording as the condition of the tube or cavity behind it is 
‘primary ”’ or “* wide’? —that is to say, left negative or 
positively distended. Thus he obtains thirty-six vowel 
positions, for as many vowels, and he claims that practi- 
cally they are found sufficient ; although, in the shape of 
certain diacritical modifiers to the three fundamental pos- 
tures of the tongue and the three degrees of approach, he 


308 | BELL’S VISIBLE SPEECH. 


holds in reserve the means of increasing them, if desir- 
able, to three hundred and twenty-four ! 

The means by which all this is intimated to the eye 
is very simple and ingenious. The fundamental vowel 
character is an I, symbolizing (as above noticed) the 
position of the vocal cords in sonant vibration. Subsid- 
lary signs attached to this show the action of the tongue 
and lips. A transverse mark across the middle is the 
-unvarying sign of labial modification. The marks of 
lingual approach are fastened on at the top and bottom ; 
at the top for ‘* high ”’ approach, at the bottom for * low,” 
at. both top and bottom for “ mid;” on the right for 
‘‘front ’’ position, on the left for ‘ back,” on both right 
and left for ‘“‘ mixed.’ All vowel signs are thus long 
and slender, all consonant ones broad and round; and 
it is intended that the former, in their ordinary lower- 
case forms, shall, like our / and J, rise above or fall below 
the line which the others occupy. 

Notwithstanding the fullness and regularity of this 
scheme, and its unquestionable advantages as a mode of 
notation, we cannot. but regard it as essentially an artifi- 
cial one, not so much growing out of the facts as imposed 
upon them, ingeniously incorporating many of the obvyi- 
ous features of physical production, but not involving that 
minute and absolute knowledge of details to which it 
makes pretense. One weak point, in our opinion, is its 
distinction of the “ primary” and “ wide” conditions of 
the organs, furnishing two different vowels, behind each 
‘‘ configurative aperture ;”’ we cannot persuade ourselves 
that this is the true explanation of the differences it is 
used to account for. As examples of vowels related to 
one another in the manner claimed (the first ** primary,” 
the second ‘‘ wide’), he gives us wp and ask, eel and ill, 
pool and pull, ell and man, all and on; all of which, 
however, we regard as produced by positions of the or- 
gans differing notably from one another in the ordinary 


BELL’S VISIBLE SPEECH. 309 


manner, or by changes of the “ configurative aperture ” 
itself. Another objectionable feature is the treatment of 
the labial modification as in itself of one and the same 
degree and value in all vowels, or as governed in respect 
to closeness by the degree of lingual approximation which 
it accompanies. This ‘“ rounding” effect, as our author 
terms it, does not depend, according to him, upon the lips 
alone, but involves a “rounding” of the buccal cavity 
also, and even of the lingual and faucal tube below; 
whence the possibility, already referred to, of producing 
it without the lips. Such a change in the form of the 
tube is to us quite unintelligible ; and we are distinctly 
conscious, when the lips are released from service in 
forming an 0 or 00, of a decided compensating action at 
the base of the tongue. We are not satisfied with the 
defined relations, internal or external, of the group of 
vowels of “mixed” position (made by action both of 
front and back of tongue), variations — sometimes, we 
think, trivial or imaginary — of the * neutral” vowel, as it 
has been commonly styled. And we cannot consent to 
regard the open vowel a (in far) as “ back low wide ” — 
that is, as involving retraction of the back of the tongue 
toward the palate, to low degree only, with expanded 
organs behind the aperture. Whatever removal of the 
tongue from the position of quiescence it implies is really 
in the direction of openness rather than of closure ; this 
vowel is only negatively characterized ; it is the natural 
utterance of the human throat when most expanded. 
Without pretending, therefore, to understand otherwise 
than imperfectly the intricacies of vowel formation, we 
are yet confident that Mr. Bell’s labors do not set upon a 
firm basis the general theory of vowels. The old pyra- 
midal arrangement of them, with a (in far) at the apex, 
and ¢ and wu (in pique and rule) at the sides of the base, 
which he conceives himself to have outgrown and super- 
seded, contains more truth, and more valuable for the 


810 | BELL’S VISIBLE SPEECH. 


uses of the historic student of language, than his trilinear 
scheme with its multiplications. His system affords no 
ground for a unitary arrangement of the alphabet, vowels 
and consonants together, in all their mutual relations as ~ 
parts of a whole. His definitions of vowel and consonant 
are, to be sure, taken by themselves, nearly unexception- 
able. He says (pp. 12, 13): “In forming consonants, 
_the breath or voice is stopped or squeezed, with an effect 
of percussion, sibilation, buzzing, or vibration, in some 
part of the guttural or oral passage; and in forming 
vowels, the breath or voice flows through similar but more 
open and ‘fixed’ configurations, which merely shape or 
mould the breath, without impeding its emission ”’ — and 
to a like effect elsewhere; which is nearly equivalent to 
saying that the vowels are sounds of opener position, in- 
volving less interference on the part of the mouth-organs, 
than the consonants ; that in the one class the element of 
material, of tone, predominates; in the other the element 
of form, of articulating action. But he leaves us to sup- 
pose that all vowels (that is to say, all “* primary ” vow- 
els; though why they should be thought to differ in this 
respect from “ wide” ones is not clear to us) are equally 
akin with consonants; while, in truth, a Gin far) is at the 
farthest possible remove from them, while 7 and w Gn 
pique and rule) are close upon them, being only infinites- 
imally and evanescently distinct from y and w. And he 
equally fails to apprehend and state clearly the great 
difference in the approach made by different classes of 
consonants to a vowel value. Hence he is unable to ex- 
plain satisfactorily why and when certain consonants in 
English take on a vowel office (as m and 7 in token and 
able), and gives us such an account of the matter as would 
imply the possibility of turning the word legs into a tri- 
syllable by simply dwelling a little upon the initial 7 and 
final s (2). As a further consequence, the nature and 
structure of the syllable are obscure to him, and when he 


BELL’S VISIBLE SPEECH. 311 


comes to the subject of syllabication, he has nothing bet- 
ter to give us as a fundamental principle than the arbi- 
trary dictum that “ the natural action of the organs of 
speech is always from close to open, or from consonants to 
vowels.”’ Considering that in all our actual speech we 
are constantly passing from open to close, as well as in 
the contrary direction, we may well ask what is meant by 
this. When we say man and (rod, is only the first part 
of each utterance natural? Are we guilty of unnatural 
conduct in pronouncing up, end, arms, or, yet worse, 
strands, in which we shift direction twice, both before and 
after the vowel? What is “ nature,’ then, and what do 
we go by when we have abandoned her ? 

There are other classes of signs, forming important 
complementary parts of the general system, to which we 
have not alluded, and which we cannot undertake to 
describe. Such are the ‘“ glides’? — vanishing sounds, 
transition steps between consonant and vowel, which do 
essential service in representing the niceties of pronunci- 
ation, either general or individual; and a long series of 
** definers,” sparingly used in describing ordinary speech, 
but especially necessary in dealing with half-articulate or 
inarticulate utterances. 

So far, then, as regards the first of our three leading 
points of inquiry — the completeness and accuracy of the 
phonetic analysis represented by it — we are not disposed 
to concede to Mr. Bell’s alphabet the transcendent merit 
to which it lays claim ; indeed, notwithstanding its acute 
and penetrating discriminations, we do not see that it has 
notably advanced the general scientific comprehension ol 
the processes of utterance. And inasmuch as upon this 
mainly depends the ‘science of alphabetics,” we cannot 
but think that Mr. Ellis, in pronouncing it the first real.- 
zation of that science, overestimates its value, and does 
injustice to the other eminent men who have labored in 
the same department — only he is saved from any com- 


312 | BELL’S VISIBLE SPEECH. 


plaint on their part by having included himself in the 
same unjust condemnation. Mr. Bell’s deserts lie in the 
line of the art, rather than the science, of alphabetic no- 
tation. | | 

To assert this is, of course, to deny to the system that 
absolute and unique value which it arrogates to itself, 
and to class it with other schemes of the same character, 
more or less elaborate and ingenious. It does not stand 
so entirely alone as its author appears to imagine, even 
as regards its fundamental principle, of indicating in each 
sign all the physical acts which produce the sound signi- 
fied. The distinguished physiologist and phonetist, Dr. . 
Bricke of Vienna, has worked out a similar *“* Method of 
Phonetic Transcription’? }1— very different in aspect from 
Mr. Bell’s, as was naturally to be expected; but essen- 
tially unlike it only in adopting a more arbitrary and less 
directly symbolical set of elementary signs, and in un- 
dertaking a less complete depiction of all the phenomena 
of utterance, articulate and inarticulate. In these re- 
spects, as well as in general clearness, legibility, and 
eratefulness to the eye, the Englishman’s system seems to 
us to have the decided advantage of the German’s. As an 
instrumentality for rendering possible the exact repro- 
duction of spoken speech, we presume that its equal has 
never been devised ; perhaps its superior may never be 
devised. Mr. Bell’s experience as a professed elocutionist 
and trainer of the voice has come admirably to his aid in 
the construction of his alphabet. 

It may seem, at first glance, as if the acknowledged 
success of the experiments of reproduction tried with this 
alphabet proved the truth of the physical basis upon 
which it rests. But a moment’s consideration will show 
that the case is otherwise. For practical use it makes no 
difference whether a certain sign represents an exact 


1 To be found in the Proceedings of ‘the Vienna Academy of Sciences, vol. 
xli. (1863), p. 223 seq. 


BELL’S VISIBLE SPEECH. 8318 


phonetic analysis of the sound it signifies, or whether it 
stands conventionally for that sound. Mr. Bell places 
before our eyes, we will say, a scratch on paper which 
directs us to approximate the back and front of. the 
tongue together toward the palate to a medium degree, 
to open the organs behind the configurative aperture, 
and to apply a rounding effect. Now who in the world 
(ain this world, where even the most practiced phonolo- 
gists are still disputing over the mode of production of 
vowel sounds) is going to give him the sound he expects ? 
Not we, certainly ; we will not even undertake to find 
by means of the description the precise American pro- 
nunciation of the vowel of stone, which he finally gives 
us as its original. Nor, we presume, would the young 
men whom he made use of in his experiments as readers 
have been more successful. If, however, he gives us the 
sound intended to be signified, we can reproduce that, at 
once or after sufficient practice ; and we can so associate 
it with the sign as to utter it whenever the sign is shown 
us; and equally well, whether we do or do not make the 
attempt to find out for ourselves that the sign has a right 
to stand for the sound, or even whether, having made the 
attempt, we conclude that it has or that it has not that 
right. And if we have learned in this way thirty-six 
vowel sounds with their attributed signs, we may safely 
set up as accurate pronouncers, word by word and phrase 
by phrase, of nearly all human languages, so far as the 
vowel part of them is concerned. 

In point of practical applicability, therefore (the 
eround of our second leading inquiry), the new alpha- 
bet is to a great extent independent of the physical anal- 
ysis on which it professes to be founded. To a great 
extent, we say, but not absolutely ; for it is easier to 
accept for a sound a wholly conventional sign than one 
which tries to describe it, and describes it falsely. Yet 
even here there are degrees; while we might consent to 


314 | BELL’S VISIBLE SPEECH. 


use without scruple the prescribed character for the diffi- 
cult vowel sound of stone, we could never prevail upon 
ourselves to write habitually for th a hieroglyph which 
asserted that both the front and point of the tongue are 
concerned in its production, and form a central closure 
with side emission. It is in such points as this that Mr. 
Bell’s alphabet, with all its merits, seems imperatively to 
call for amendment before it shall be entitled to general 
-acceptance and currency. 

But, even if amended into practical perfection, what 
is the degree and kind of currency which it can hope to 
gain? Here we think Mr. Bell commits his most serious 
error, exaggerating beyond measure the sphere of useful- 
ness of his invention. He has worked over these mat- 
ters so long, has studied so thoroughly the mechanism of 
the voice, has traced the action and effect of every organ 
so clearly, that now, when he has hit upon a sign which 
brings each articulation plainly before his mind, he thinks 
that it will do the same almost as readily for other minds. 
One of the unfortunate effects of this persuasion of his is 
to be seen in the form into which he has cast his pub- 
lished account of his alphabet, rendering it an exceedingly 
hard work to study, and doubtless driving away many 
a student who might otherwise have mastered the system, 
and been interested in its behalf. Instead of beginning 
with definition and illustration together, making each 
described position of the organs more readily apprehen- 
sible by noting the sound it yields, he fills the first two 
thirds of his volume with pure description and designa- 
tion, and only then begins to introduce the equivalents in 
our alphabet of the sounds intended. Even those who 
are accustomed to phonetic analysis are perplexed by such 
a course, and compelled to begin the book after the mid- 
dle, or else to draw out tables of corresponding signs in 
the old alphabet and the new, to help them read with 
intelligence and profit the opening chapters. 


BELL’S VISIBLE SPEECH. 315 


In accordance with this is Mr. Bell’s conviction that, 
his analysis and alphabet being now complete, every one 
hereafter is going to be able to read and pronounce every- 
thing with exactness. Thus he says, for example (p. 
116), after making the adaptation of his system to Eng- 
lish speech: ** Chiefly on account of these delicate and 
unascertained varieties of sound, the native pronunciation 
of English has been found excessively difficult for for- 
eigners to master. It will no longer be so.”’ For, all we 
want is to know what the thing to be done is, and how it 
is to be done, and we can doit. This is a little too san- 
guine. So all the motions required for executing a diffi- 
cult feat in skating can be described ; but woe to him 
who attempts to execute it from directions on paper, 
without due preparatory drill! Make a man a skillful 
skater, and he will do upon the ice what he is told to do; 
make him a phonologist, teach him to feel his organs of 
utterance at work, and to direct them in detail by con- 
scious exertions of his will, and he will read, with suc- 
cess, from signs physically descriptive: 

What our author fails.to appreciate is, that a system 
like his is essentially a scientific nomenclature, like a 
chemical or zodlogical nomenclature. It does not teach 
the science ; in learning it, one does not learn the science; 
it is worth a great deal to him who knows the science, 
but little to a layman ; it may do not alittle to clear up 
the relations of the science, and make its acquisition 
easier ; but, after all, the science is the hard thing to learn, 
and the nomenclature only of secondary account. That 
the new alphabet is going to help all the classes for 
whom Mr. Bell destines it we do not venture to hope. 
That the illiterate man, for example, is to learn to read 
the sooner for having added to his task that of observing 
how each sound he utters is produced, seems quite unrea- 
sonable. To him the symbolical signs will be useful only 
as any strictly phonetic orthography is easier than an irreg- 


316 | BELL’S VISIBLE SPEECH. © 


ular one, like ours. To expect that the missionary, 
armed with it, is to master without difficulty, and write 
down with exactness, the strange dialects with which he 
comes in contact, is equally unreasonable. ‘The task of 
distinctly apprehending their unaccustomed sounds, of 
reproducing these correctly, of detecting the motions 
which originate them, will be as severe as ever; and he 
who has accomplished it will find a far inferior difficulty 
in signifying them intelligibly. To the great mass of 
readers there is, and can be, no advantage in a mode of 
writing all whose signs are physically significant ; they must 
learn and use it as conventional only. Our own alphabet, 
modified to phonetic consistency, would suit their pur- 
poses equally well— nay, they even prefer it unmodi- 
fied. Prove to a man as triumphantly as you will that 
laugh is an absurd orthography, and that it is much better 
to write laf, yet he goes on to spell laugh as before, and 
it will not help the matter to give him a new set of signs 
to write /g@f with. The fate of the various phonetic sys- 
tems, probably, foreshadows that of Mr. Bell’s. There 
was no good reason for his speaking disparagingly of the 
labors of men like Lepsius, who, accepting as a-porten- 
tous fact the immense existing prejudice in favor of famil- 
ilar signs, have endeavored to work out of these some- 
thing approaching system—with the partial aim, 
moreover, of transliterating’ strange modes of writing as 
well as of speaking. Probably he has been, by this time, 
disappointed by the unenthusiastic reception his discovery 
has met, and the little attention .it has attracted. He 
must learn to be content with addressing chiefly those in- 
terested in phonetic science, instead of the great public ; 
with seeking the sympathy and criticism of his equals, 
instead of imposing his system under governmental au- 
thority, as something finished and immaculate, upon the_ 
community at large. Its claim to extraordinary support 
is not greater than that of any other new and improved 


BELL’S VISIBLE SPEECH. 317 


scientific nomenclature ; and the condemnation which its 
author expects to see passed upon the Derby Cabinet, for 
neglect of so grand an opportunity, will, we presume, be 
indefinitely suspended. In its own proper sphere, and 
especially with a clearer and more apprehensible method 
of presentation, it may be relied on to do much good, 
attracting toward and facilitating phonetic studies, and 
perhaps contributing a chief part to that alphabetic sys- 
tem —not a theoretically perfect one, for the conditions 
of the case admit of none such, but a system more suc- 
cessfully compromised, more nicely adjusted to the ascer- 
tained needs of the transcription of all languages, than 
any other — which the future is to bring forth. 


XI. 
ON THE ACCENT IN SANSKRIT. 


Sly 


By accent, as every one knows, we mean a certain 
prominence given to one of the syllables of a word, dis- 
_tinguishing this above the other syllables. Whatever its 
origin — whether historical, as representing the emphatic 
element in that aggregation of monosyllabic radicals of 
which words were made up, or euphonic, as breaking mo- 
notony, and giving movement and measure to words — 
it is an almost or altogether universal characteristic of lan- 
guage, and has borne an important part in governing the 
phonetic history of languages. But in different tongues 
it is of different character and efficiency — and this to a 
degree and within limits which are still to be investi- 
gated. The subject is one of not a little intricacy and 
difficulty, and only the most recent phonetic science is 
developing the capacity to deal with it in a satisfactory 
manner.! JI shall attempt here only a slight and unpre- 
tending contribution to its discussion, by setting forth and 
putting within reach of a larger number of inquirers the 
most important facts relating to the comparatively unfa- 
miliar matter of the Sanskrit accent. 

How the prominence and distinction which constitute 
the accent are given to the accented syllable is not to be 

1 See especially Mr. A. J. Ellis’s paper On the Physical Constituents of Accent 


and Emphasis, in the London Philological Society’s Transactions for 1873-74, 
pp. 113-164. 


THE SANSKRIT ACCENT. 319 


simply and briefly defined, because even in the same lan- 
guage it varies considerably under varying circumstances. 
We ourselves, though we call our accent a stress of voice, 
suffer it to find expression in different ways: by higher 
pitch, by prolongation, by increased force, by superior 
completeness and distinctness of enunciation — any one 
of these, or two or more of them combined. Taking the 
language word by word, the first method, elevation of 
pitch, is the prevailing one. Choose a specimen word of 
more than one syllable, read a list of words, and the ac- 
cented syllable will have every time a higher tone ; to 
mark it otherwise will either seem unnatural and affected, 
or will give the impression of saying something, of using 
. the word as an abbreviated sentence, with the context 
omitted. For, in uttering a sentence, the modulation of 
voice belonging to the expression of the sentence predom- 
inates, throwing the proper word-accent into a wholly 
subservient place, as regards pitch of voice, and compel- 
ling resort to the other means of distinction: even, in 
certain cases, reducing or annulling the accentual distine- 
tion. Give out Jénathan as a word to be spelt, or mention 
it as specimen of a proper name, and the first syllable will 
be raised above the others; and so also when it answers a 
question like ‘* who is here? ’’ But make a question of the 
word itself, and the relation of pitch is reversed ; utter 
the syllables in monotone, and astonishment or reproach 
may be conveyed; and the same monotone will be the 
effect of putting it after a strongly emphatic word: and 
each combination of tones may be shifted up and down 
the scale through considerable intervals, to satisfy the 
higher needs of expression. If we enunciate a whole sen- 
tence together, the same subordination of the word-stress 
or accent to the sentence-stress or emphasis — most mark- 
edly in the element of pitch, yet not in that alone — will 
be clearly apparent ; the accent no more notably makes 
the unity of the word than does the emphasis that of the 


320 | THE SANSKRIT ACCENT. 


phrase or sentence; to utter each word as if we were 
pronouncing it alone would be insufferably monotonous 
and tedious, would destroy the life and soul of speech. 

‘There is hardly another language in which this post- 
ponement of the claims of accent to those of emphasis 
can be expected to prove more complete than ours; for 
English is so prevailingly monosyllabic! that accent 
proper has scant opportunity left to manifest itself at all. 
But in our treatment of the longer-worded Latin and 
Greek, or in the utterance of German,? the same two 
leading principles may be observed: the raised tone of 
the accented syllable when each word is given by itself, 
and the annulment of this relation to a great extent, or 
its reversal, before the more commanding needs of sen- 
tence-expression. These are facts which we need to bear 
carefully in mind, when inquiring into the mode of ac- 
centuation of those ancient languages respecting which 
we cannot derive information by listening to their speak- 
ers. 

For the three ancient languages, indeed, which we 
deem of most importance, and to which we devote most 
study — namely, Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit —-we have 
quite full and detailed information respecting the nature 
and place of their accent from grammarians to whom 
they were native ; besides, for two of them — Greek and 
Sanskrit —abundant accentuated texts. And the infor- 
mation given is strikingly accordant for all. In each of 
them, the ordinary accented syllable is described as one 
uttered in a higher tone than the rest. In each one, more- 

1 Three quarters of its words, on the average, having no more than one syl- 
lable: see above, p. 275. 

2 It is not allowable to add ‘‘ or of French,’’ the French being the most anom- 
alous of known languages as concerns accent; both Frenchmen and foreigners 
are yet disputing whether it has any accent at all, and, if it has, on what syl- 
lable the stress is laid: the prevailing and best-supported doctrine being that the 
final syllable (not counting a mute e), as it regularly represents the accented 


syllable of the Latin word, so also has whatever accent, though a very weak one, 
the French possesses. 


THE SANSKRIT ACCENT. . 321 


over, is recognized a second accent, a ‘ circumflex,” which 
is defined as a combination of higher and lower tone 
within the limits of the same syllable, a downward leap 
or slide of the voice. This double-pitch accent, as might 
be expected, is of somewhat restricted use, as regards both 
the character and the place of the syllable receiving it: in 
Latin and Greek, it can rest only upon a vowel which is 
naturally long and so gives space for the slide or leap of 
the voice; in Sanskrit, it is almost confined to syllables 
in which a semivocalic y or w sound precedes the vowel, 
and takes the first stress of voice. So far as the Latin 
and Greek are concerned, this simple mention of well- 
known or easily accessible facts ? is sufficient ; we pass to 
a more special consideration of what the Hindu gramma- 
rians hold and teach about their accent. 

The great Panini, supreme authority to the Hindus 
in all that concerns their ancient and sacred language, is 
clear and intelligible in his statements as to accent; and 
upon the foundation of his work and its commentaries 
alone, without access to any accentuated texts, Bohtlingk 
gave in 1843 an acute, intelligent, and surprisingly cor- 
rect account both of the theory and of the main facts of 
Sanskrit accent, one which in many respects has not been 
surpassed or superseded by anything that has since ap- 
peared. But the brevity of Panini is acceptably supple- 
mented by the more detailed treatment of the subject in 
the Praticgakhyas. ‘These are treatises which attach them- 
selves each to a single Vedic text, as phonetic manual of 
the school to which that text belongs. They deal with 


1 Though the circumflex makes no figure in our ordinary Latin grammars, it 
was fully recognized by the Roman grammarians. See, for example, Roby’s 
Grammar, § 296, and Professor Hadley’s Essay ‘‘ On the Nature and Theory of 
the Greek Accent,’ contained in his Hssays, p. 110 seq., and also in the T’ransac- 
tions of the Am. Phil. Assoc’n for 1870. 

2 The reader may be referred especially to the essay by Professor Hadley, 
quoted in the preceding note. 

3 Ein erster Versuch iiber den Accent im Sanskrit, in the Memoirs of the St. 
Petersburg Academy. 

21 


One ; THE SANSKRIT ACCENT. 


all the elements of articulate utterance: with the mode 
of production and the classification of articulate sounds, | 
with accent and quantity, with rules of euphonic combi- 
nation, and so on; and they prescribe how the various 
forms of text in which their Veda is preserved are to be 
constructed, cataloguing its slightest irregularities of form, 
and endeavoring to fix its readings beyond the reach of 
question or change. Four such treatises have come to 
light: one belonging to the Rig-Veda, one to the White 
Yajur-Veda or VAajasaneyi-Sanhita, one to the Black 
Yajur-Veda or Taittiriya-Sanhita, and one to the Athar- 
va-Veda; for the Sama-Veda alone none has yet been 
found. All have now been edited in full.t Prior to the 
publication of any of them, the teachings of the first three 
with regard to accent were summarily presented by Roth 
(who was the first to call the attention of scholars to this 
class of works), in the introduction to his edition of Yas- 
ka’s Nirukta (Gottingen, 1852). 

The information derivable from these various sources is 
full enough, not only to let us see pretty clearly the views 
held by the ancient Hindu students of their own tongue 
(their age, unfortunately, is not ascertained, but is gen- 
erally believed to have preceded by some centuries the 
Christian era), but also to enable us in some measure to 
trace the development of their accentual theory, and to 
criticise it in its details. For, though we cannot help ad- 
miring and respecting, and that in a very high degree, 
the acuteness and sagacity of those oldest known phonol- 
ogists, we cannot accept for truth all. that they give us, 
without first carefully questioning it, and testing it by 
fact and by theory. Sharpness of distinction, skill in 


1 The Rik-Praticakhya by Regnier, in the Journal Asiatique (Paris, 1857-59), 
and by M. Miller (Leipzig, 1856-69); the Vdjasaneyi-Pratigakhya by Weber, in 
the fourth volume of his Jndische Studien (Berlin, 1858); the Atharva-Pratica- 
khya and the Tdittiriya-Pratigakhya by myself, in the seventh and ninth vol- 
umes of the Journal of the American Oriental Society (New Haven, 1862 and 
1871). 


THE SANSKRIT ACCENT. 323 


combination, and elaborateness of systematization, have 
been characteristics of the Hindu workers in every depart- 
ment of science to which they have turned their hands ; 
but they are not equally to be commended for modera- 
tion, nor is their soundness and accuracy to be trusted to 
the very end. They never knew where to stop; and 
their systems always tended to take on a prescriptive 
character where they were meant to be descriptive only, 
putting violence upon the facts which they set out simply 
to examine and classify. We may probably enough meet, 
at one and another point in their treatment of the accent, 
their national and distinctive weaknesses, and feel com- 
pelled to modify and amend their doctrines. 

The word used in defining the accents is svara,} 
‘tone.’ In virtue of its proper meaning, it is applied to 
designate also other things than accentual tone. Thus, 
it is the ordinary name of a ‘vowel,’ as being a tone- 
sound, an utterance in which the element of tone pre- 
dominates over that of oral modification ; and it is in the 
Pratigdakhyas used a dozen times in this sense to once in 
any or all others. Again, by a usage closely akin to its 
accentual one, it signifies the ‘‘ tones” or musical notes 
which.compose the scale. 

We are informed, then, that a syllable is, in respect to 
its tone, either wddtta, anuddtta, or svarita. 

The term uddtta means literally ‘taken up, raised, 
elevated.’ And the description of the tone by all the 
authorities corresponds with this title; that syllable is 
uddtta which is uttered uccdis, ‘on a high pitch.’ Or- 
dinarily, one fixed syllable in every word is uddtta, as 
one in Latin or Greek is acute. The uddétta, then, is 
the correspondent, in character and value, of the Latin 
and Greek acute; it is what we call the usual accented 
syllable of the word. 


1 The sound which is here and elsewhere written with a v, in accordance 
with prevailing European custom, is originally and properly the w-sound. 


ot THE SANSKRIT ACCENT. . 


The remaining syllables are ordinarily anuddtta. This 
is the same word with the negative prefix, and so means 
‘not raised, unelevated.’ The authorities define it as 
belonging to a syllable which is uttered nicdis, ‘on a 
low pitch.’ This lowness of pitch does not, of course, 
imply a fall below the ordinary level of voice; the tone is 
low as compared with uddtta ; the term is a purely neg- 
ative one, denying that uplifting of pitch which marks 
the positively accented syllable. 

The name of the third tone is svarita, and the tone it- 
self is uniformly explained as consisting in a combination 
of the other two, a union of higher and lower pitch upon 
the same vowel, or within the same syllable. As regards 
the distribution of the time of the syllable between the 
two tones, Panini, for example, says (i. 2. 82): “ Half 
[the quantity of] a short vowel at the beginning [of a 
svarita] is uddtta;” the Atharva-Praticakhya G. 17), 
‘‘half the quantity of a svarita, at its beginning, is 
uddtta;” the Vajasaneyi-Pratigdakhya Ci. 126), ‘at its 
beginning, half the quantity of the vowel is udétta.” 
The other two Pratigakhyas complicate the definition 
with a further development of the accentual theory, to 
be explained hereafter ; but there is no discordance what- 
ever as to the essential nature of the tone, as being a 
union of higher and lower pitch in the same syllable. 
No hint of an intermediate or ‘ middle tone ”’ is given, 
nor do we discover traces of the former prevalence of any 
other view, crowded out and replaced by this. Of the 
name svarita, however, no satisfactory explanation has 
yet been found. The word is probably a quasi-participial 
formation from svara itself, and means ‘toned;’ pos- 
sibly, it was applied to such syllables as showed most 
conspicuously the element of tone, their change of pitch 
giving them a cadenced or sing-song effect. What is un- 
mistakably clear is the view which the Hindus unani- 
mously held as to the nature of the tone thus designated ; 


THE SANSKRIT ACCENT. 325 


and any interpretation which we may try to put upon 
svarita must be subordinated to this: we have no right 
to conjecture an etymology for the name, and then to 
foree it into a definition of the thing named. 

The accordance of the three Sanskrit tones, as thus de- 
fined, with the acute, grave, and circumflex of the Greek, 
appears to me to be placed beyond all reach of successful 
question; and we are justified in setting aside, when 
speaking of the Sanskrit accent, the outlandish Sanskrit 
terms uddtta, anuddtta, and svarita, and employing in 
their place the equivalent designations with which every 
one is familiar. ‘These were used by Bohtlingk, in the 
essay which (as above pointed out) first opened the 
knowledge of the Sanskrit accent to Europe; and the 
more the subject is understood, the more generally will 
they be adopted.! 

The correctness of the Hindu theory as to the nature 
of the acute and circumflex tones is strongly supported 
by the phenomena of origination and occurrence of the 
latter. The circumflex in Sanskrit is a far rarer and 
more secondary accent than in Greek. Only a very 
small class of words have it as their proper accent at all; 
and it arises chiefly in the course of combination of words 
into phrases, by the peculiar euphonic system of the 
Sanskrit — which, as is generally known, does not leave its 
words side by side in their integrity of form, but adapts 
together their final and initial elements, avoiding the hia- 
tus and any collision of incompatible consonants.” 

1 Mr. Ellis’s rejection of the parallelism and retention of the Indian names 
in his paper on Accent and Emphasis (referred to on p. 318) reposes, so far as 
I can see, simply on his peculiar apprehension of the Greek acute, as being an 
uplift of a fifth above the tone of the preceding syllable, whatever that may 
have been; so that a succession of acutes, instead of sharing a common rise 
above the general level of utterance, would leap each a fifth above its predecessor 
—a view which I believe no one else has taken, and which seems obviously 
erroneous. 

2 Which, it may be added, as the metrical form of the Vedic hymns proves, 
is in no small part artificial, belonging to the language as shaped over for 


learned use by grammarians. No vernacular speech could ever have sacrificed 
to such a degree the integrity of its words to a supposed euphony. 


326 THE SANSKRIT ACCENT. 


The first class of circumflexes arises when an accented 
or acute 2 or 7, or u, 1s converted into y or v (2. e. our w) 
before a grave or unaccented dissimilar vowel. Thus vt 
and evé are combined into vyévd ;1 nadi' and asya, into 
nadydsya ; apst and agne into apsvdgne. ‘That is to say, 
the single syllable into which the higher and lower tone 
are combined still retains the double pitch belonging to 
its constituent parts. 

One of the most peculiar and problematical processes 
in the whole euphonic system of the Sanskrit is that by 
which a final e or o absorbs or elides an initial short a of 
the word that follows; though only an occasional license 
in the older Vedic language, it has become the rule of 
combination in the later or classical Sanskrit. Wher- 
ever, now, the e or 0 is acute and the a grave, the accent 
of the former after the absorption of the latter is made 
circumflex. Thus, té abravan becomes tébravan; 86 
abravit becomes sdbravit. Here, again, the acute and 
grave tones of the constituent elements are evidently 
both preserved to the syllable which results from their 
combination. | 

If, however, two vowels are fused together into a sin- 
gle vowel or diphthong, then, if either was acute, the re- 
sulting combination, as a general rule, is also acute: that 
is to say, the acute element is powerful enough to assim- 
ilate the other, raising the whole syllable to the higher 
tone. Thus, sé’ and asti become sd‘stz, sé’ and at become 
sét, stha and t'rjam become sthérjam, and so on. 
Panini, indeed (vii. 2. 6), also permits the result of com- 
bination of a final acute with an initial grave to be cir- 
cumflex: that is, he allows sd’ asti to become either sd'stz 
or sast?, and so on. Of course, considering the nature of 
the circumflex, this is just the exception which we might 
expect to see made; and that it is not universally made 


1 For lack of means to do better, I signify the circumflex, as a downward 
slide forward, with what we ordinarily call the sign of grave. 


THE SANSKRIT ACCENT. 327 


in Sanskrit usage indicates the very different place which 
the circumflex accent takes in Sanskrit as compared with 
Greek: the latter language has a predilection for it, and 
lets it appear in innumerable cases where it has no ety- 
mological occasion; the former language has an aversion 
to it, and exhibits it only where, as it were, compelled 
to do so. 

By a peculiar and quite rare exception, most of the 
Vedic texts make circumflex a long ¢ arising from the 
fusion of two short 7’s, the first acute, the second grave. 
Thus, divi iva becomes diviva, abht thi becomes abhthi. 
Lhe Taittirtya-Sanhitaé, however, denies the circumflex 
to such an i, but gives it to the much rarer @ of like ori- 
gin: combining, for example, mésé@ ut- into mdsi't-. 

Besides these cases, in which a circumflex arises by the 
combination into one syllable of a preceding acute and a 
following grave element, there remains a limited class of 
words which show the circumflex as their original and 
proper accent: such are svdr, ‘heaven,’ kva, ‘ where,’ 
tanvam, ‘body’ (accus. sing.), kany, ‘girl,’ budhnyd, 
‘fundamental,’ nadyds, ‘streams’ (nom. pl.), and so 
on. But every word of this class contains a y or v before 
the vowel of its accented syllable; and it is obvious that 
the circumflex here is essentially of the same kind with 
that of the class first described above, its origin lying 
merely a step further back. That is to say, that tanvdm 
and nadyds are for tant/-am and nadi’-as, and made by a 
combination of the acute final of the theme with the 
graye initial of the ending, there being no essential dif- 
ference between nadyds and the more fortuitous nad- 
yasya, instanced above; that svdr is for an earlier star, 
kvd for kia, and so on. And the Vedic verse clearly 
shows that the fusion of the two syllables into one, with 
consequent circumflex, is a fact not yet accomplished in 
Vedic times: such syllables are more often to be read as 
two than as one — kvd, for example, becoming dissylla- 


328 . THE SANSKRIT ACCENT. 


bic, and kany@ trisyllabic. Indeed, the Taittiriya-San- 
hita, which has a peculiar orthographic usage with regard 
to a part of these words, regularly writes sévar instead 
of sudr, tantivam instead of tanvam, etc. 

So far, there is nothing difficult or questionable either 
in the theory or in the practice of Sanskrit accentuation, 
and all the phenomena are of a nature to favor and estab- 
lish the truth of that description of the nature of the 
svarita which is given by the grammarians. But we 
have next to consider a more problematical addition to 
the theory. The authorities, namely, teach with one 
voice that a syllable naturally grave becomes cireumflex 
if an acute precedes it, either in the same or in another 
word. So, for example, the Rik-Pratigakhya says (iil. 9): 
“A grave syllable preceded by an acute is circumflexed, 
whether separated from it by a hiatus or by a conso- 
nant.” The final of 7, then, is not grave, but circum- 
flex ; and so is the initial syllable of the toneless wa in 
sé wa. The virtual meaning of the doctrine must, it 
seems, be understood somewhat thus: the voice, when 
once raised to the higher pitch of acute, does not ordina- 
rily descend to the general level of utterance between the 
acute syllable and its successor, but leaps or slides down 
in the course of the latter; it occupies a syllable in its 
descent. This kind of circumflex, since it is a subordi- 
nate accompaniment of the acute, is conveniently distin- 
guished by European grammarians from those which 
have been described above by being called the ‘* depend- 
ent’’ or ‘“‘enclitic”’ circumflex: the term, however, has 
no correspondent in Sanskrit, nor do the Hindu gramma- 
rians, by description, classification, or designation, inti- 
mate a recognition of any difference in character between 
the enclitic and the independent varieties of this accent. 
The Pratigikhyas divide the former, as they do the lat- 
ter, into sub-varieties, with abundant nomenclature; but 
the distinctions are not of consequence enough to deserve 


THE SANSKRIT ACCENT. 329 


notice in a sketch like this.! One essential difference in 
practical treatment separates the two: if the independent 
circumflex comes to stand before an acute or another cir- 
cumflex of its own kind, it maintains itself, as in apsvdn- 
tdr ; but the enclitic under the same circumstances is 
changed to grave, and so the ca which was circumflexed 
after yé, in yé ca, recovers its character as grave in yé ca 
té, or yé ca svar. 

It is not well possible to accept the teachings of the 
Sanskrit authors respecting the enclitic circumflex with 
the same implicit trust as those respecting the independ- 
ent circumflex. It seems next to incredible that a lan- 
guage which, as we have seen, has so little inclination to 
this tone as to admit it only very rarely, as proper word- 
accent, upon even a long vowel or a diphthong, should 
allow its development enclitically in syllables of every 
variety of quantity, by the mere antecedence of an acute. 
The Taittirfya-Praticakhya is ingenuous enough to in- 
form us (xiv. 33) that some authorities rejected in toto 
the doctrine of the dependent circumflex. If we do not 
carry our own skepticism so far as that, we shall perhaps 
take refuge in the theory of a “middle tone,” such as 
some have assumed? in order to explain the peculiarities 
of Greek and Latin accent. This would imply that the 
enclitic tone which was perceived to lead down from 
acute pitch to grave was in reality an intermediate step, 
and was hastily and inaccurately apprehended by the 
Hindu grammarians as a combination of the two, or a 
slide, and so identified with the independent circumflex, 
of which the origin and character were too clear to admit 
of any doubt or question. 

A theory like this, unwilling as we may be to resort to 
it, seems less absolutely to be rejected, inasmuch as there 


1 They may be found described more fully, and named, in the essay ‘‘ On the 
Nature and Designation of the Accent in Sanskrit’? (in the Trans. Am. Philol. 
Assoc’n for 1870), of which this is in part a reproduction. 

2 See Professor Hadley’s essay, already referred to, p. 117 seq. 


330 THE SANSKRIT ACCENT. 


are other parts of the complete Hindu accentual system 
which we find exceedingly hard to explain satisfactorily 
and to accept. They cannot be suitably expounded and 
discussed without much more space than can be spared 
them here, and it will be necessary to pass them by with 
hardly more than a mention. In marking their three tones, 
the Hindus, strangely enough, leave the principal one, the 
raised or acute (uddtta), without a sign ; the grave that 
precedes the acute has a short horizontal stroke beneath ; 
the enclitic circumflex that follows it (as also the inde- 
pendent circumflex, which then has usually the sign of 
grave immediately before it) has a short perpendicular 
stroke above — both strokes being uniformly added in 
red ink in the manuscripts. If, after it has been sent 
downward by the circumflex sign, the voice runs on 
through a series of grave syllables before the next acute, 
only the last of these graves is marked with the horizon- 
tal stroke; the rest are left unmarked, as are the acutes 
under all circumstances. And these unmarked grave 
syllables are called pracita, ‘accumulated,’ apparently be- 
cause they often occur in no small number in succession. 
I conjecture it, now, to be a later addition to the original 
accentual theory that the pracita syllables are by all the 
Praticakhyas (not by Panini) declared to have, though 
really grave, a tone equivalent to acute. And then fol- 
lows, in two of the Praticakhyas (in one of them, not with- 
out abundant quotation of dissenting views), the further 
resulting doctrine, that the circumflex leads, not from acute 
down to grave, but from a pitch higher than acute down to 
acute. I cannot work these doctrines in as part of a con- 
sistent and intelligible system of accentuation, and am 
obliged, at least provisionally, t 0 hold them for later ex- 
crescences and perversions, and to refuse them acceptance. : 

1 They are discussed at much greater length in the essay in Trans. Am. Philol. 
Assoc’n, referred to in a previous note. Professor Haug, of Munich, has repeat- 


edly pointed out that the modern recitation of the Vedic texts by the Brah- 
mans is in accordance with them; and he therefore looks upon them as not less 


THE SANSKRIT ACCENT, 331 


As a general rule, in both Greek and Sanskrit, the 
grammarians and their systems of written signs take no- 
tice only of the word-accent, and not also of its modifica- 
tion by the sentence-accent, or emphatic variation of tone ; 
they denote only the raised or the circumflexed syllable of 
each word taken as an independent unconnected vocable. 
To infer from this, however, that there was no rhetorical 
modulation of the sentence, dominating the word-accent, 
might be a somewhat questionable proceeding. For my 
part, I should not dare to draw such an inference. The 
tedious monotony which would be the result of a tone 
swinging and sliding back and forth only between the 
_ narrow limits prescribed by the accentual theory, and in 
strict observance of grave, acute, and circumflex — who 
will ascribe this to the lively and impassioned Greek ? 
Think of Demosthenes, for example, swaying his audi- 
ences with such a style of oratorical delivery! That 
there may have been a difference between his language 
and ours as regards the degree of domination of the one 
element and subordination of the other, that more of the 
uplifting of tone belonging to the accent of the separate 
word may have been saved by the Greek in connected 
utterance, I would by no means lightly deny ; but the 
recorded accent observes silence as to the whole matter ; 
we may expect to arrive at some competent and confident 
opinion about it when the accent of many or most living 
languages shall have been examined with the thorough- 
ness and scientific method which belong to the modern 
school of phonology. To allow any measure of unre- 
corded modulation would be to assimilate so far those 
genuine than the rest. In maintaining this, however, he is obliged to assume 
that the whole has nothing to do with what we call accent at all, but is a mere 
artificial system of variations of tone, with no assignable purpose. To do this 
is to plunge one’s self into difficulties vastly greater than those with which we 


have been trying to contend. I do not know that any other scholar of note 
shares Haug’s views on this subject. They are most elaborately set forth.im 


essay just published in the Transactions of the Munich Academy (Philos. eeRny a 


Classe, vol. xiii. part 2, 1874). 7 


AS w _— 


332 ; THE SANSKRIT ACCENT. 


ancient modes of accent to our own, would imply an 
essential sameness of character in them all, and would 
show us in the Modern Greek accentuation — which is 
the genetic descendant and representative of the ancient, 
distinguishing the same syllable of every word, and yet is 
in no marked manner different from ours — only an admis- 
sible change of style, and not a violent transformation. 
As for the relation of accent and quantity in the con- 
_ struction of verse, and the preservation of both elements 
to the ear in reading, that is another and a far harder 
question. But the peculiarity of measured verse appears 
to have depended much more upon the different appre- 
hension and appreciation of the element of quantity than 
upon difference of accentuation, and its style of utterance 
to have been very unlike that of prose. The metres were 
really measured off, with a musical movement, and an 
elaborate delivery quite in contrast with the almost con- 
versational one which we affect in our poetic reading or 
recitation ; it was a kind of sing-song or cantilena. This 
structure of verse was as natural to the Sanskrit as to the 
Greek ; both the hymns of the Vedas and the poetry of 
the later language are governed by quantity alone, with- 
out any the slightest consideration of accent, and also with 
the same recognition of the length (or “ heaviness,” as 
the Hindu grammarians, by a convenient and useful dis- 
tinction, term it) of a syllable by “ position,” as equiv- 
alent to length by quantity of vowel. Dr. Haug has 
heard and studied, and he describes with some fullness,? 
the delivery of the Vedic hymn-texts as practiced by the 
learned priests of the present day. It has been somewhat 
altered from what it must have been at first ; the proper 
measure has been hidden under an exaggerated rendering 
of the modulation of the word-accent, as it has been elab- 
orated in the schools and marked in the written texts. 
But neither in Greek nor in Sanskrit is there a total 


1 Particularly in his recent essay in the Transactions of the Munich Academy. 


THE SANSKRIT ACCENT. Boo 


absence of endeavor to mark the accent of words as af- 
fected by the combinations of connected discourse ; only 
it is confined within narrow limits, and does not at all 
extend to the general expression, the rhetorical modula- 
tion, of the sentence. ‘Thus, in Greek, there are words 
which — like our articles, auxiliaries, prepositions of and 
to, and their like— are uniformly unemphatic, pronounced 
without stress of voice; such are without accent, being 
reckoned either as “* proclitics” or ‘enclities ;”’ and be- 
fore the latter, the final of a preceding word takes often 
an additional stress or elevation. And the final acute 
of a word followed by others (not enclitic) connected in 
construction with it has its accent-mark changed from 
‘acute’ to “‘erave:” precisely what alteration of tone 
this signifies is quite obscure; probably! a depression of 
pitch, though not so far as to the general level of the voice. 

The Sanskrit has no enclitics, in the Greek sense of the 
word, as exercising an influence upon the accent of the 
word that precedes them ; nor proclitics, as leaning forward 
upon a fully accented word, and able to stand before it at 
the head of a sentence. But it has a considerable class of 
accentless words — pronouns and particles— and a smaller 
class that are sometimes accented and sometimes not, ac- 
cording to their situation and their importance in the 
sentence (though this last item is not always easy to ap- 
preciate). Apart from these, the effort to mark the in- 
fluence of connected discourse on the word-accent expends 
itself upon vocatives and upon the personal forms (ex- 
cluding participial and infinitival words) of verbs. 

The Sanskrit vocative, whether of noun or adjective, is 
always accented on its first syllable, if 1t is accented at 
all. But it receives an accent only when it stands at the 
head of the sentence ; if interjected, put after any part 
or all of the sentence of address, it is toneless. It does 
not seem hard to recognize in our own usage what might 


1 See Professor Hadley’s essay, already quoted, p. 117 seq. 


354 : THE SANSKRIT ACCENT. 


have been the basis of a treatment like this. If, in eall- 
ing to a person, the name be put first, the design is to 
attract attention, and the full accent: is given to the word ; 
but the same name inserted parenthetically, after the 
address is begun, is for a very different purpose, and is 
given with very different effect, being ordinarily dropped 
to a lower monotone. Any one, it seems to me, may find 
or make an example of this in his own usage: I will sug- 
gest only ‘ Friends! countrymen! lovers! hear me for 
my cause ;’’ and ‘“* Hear me, friends and countrymen, for 
my cause.” The effect may not be necessarily and always 
of this character ; but the Hindus, having once recognized 
and established the principle, have consistently carried it 
out everywhere, with that same disregard of the detailed 
modulation of the voice in sentence-expression which is 
shown in their general treatment of the word-accent.! 

As for the verb, the general rule is that, if not standing 
at the head of its sentence or clause,” its personal or finite 
forms are unaccented in independent construction, but 
accented in dependent. Thus, we should read té bru- 
vanti, ‘ they speak,’ but yé té bruvdnti, ‘ they who speak,’ 
ydd bruvdnti, ‘what they speak,’ yddi bruvdnti, ‘if they 
speak,’ and so on: also bruvdnti, or bruvdnti té, ‘ they 
speak.’ The prepositional prefix, if the verb be unac- 
cented, itself has the accent, as té prdbruvanti, ‘ they pro- 
claim ;’ if the verb receive the accent, the prefix loses 
it, provided it immediately precedes, as in yé prabruvdntt, 
‘who proclaim ;’ if (as is frequent in Vedic, though not 
in later Sanskrit) other words are interposed between 
prefix and verb, the assumption of accent by the latter 


1 There are, to be sure, irregularities in the Vedic treatment of vocative ac- 
cent, which render desirable a complete assemblage and discussion of the in- 
stances — which no one, so far as I know, has yet undertaken. It may be 
remarked further that a genitive dependent on a vocative, not less than an ad- 
jective qualifying it, is liable to share in its loss of accent; an interesting illus- 
tration of the usual quasi-adjectival character of that case. 

2 And, in poetry, each constituent division of a verse is reckoned as a separate 
clause, at the head of which either verb or vocative must be accented. 


THE SANSKRIT ACCENT. 335 


has no influence on the former; and we read, for ex- 
ample, pré yé téd bruvdnti, ‘ who proclaim that.’ This 
difference in the accentual treatment of the verb, accord- 
ing as it is found in an independent or a dependent clause, 
is the most peculiar feature in the whole Hindu system, 
and has yet to find a satisfactory explanation.! 

There are a few other cases in which the verb in 
Sanskrit is allowed to retain its natural accent: certain 
particles, having a more or less illative force, cause its 
preservation ; and where there is a distinct antithesis 
between two clauses, as introduced by both—and, by 
either — or, by the one — the other, and so on, the verb 
of the former clause is often accented. These are, how 
ever, matters of detail, into which we have no need here 
to enter.” 

To render this sketch more complete, it may be worth 
while to add a few words as to the position of the syllable 
on which the accent falls in a Sanskrit word. The accent 
of the various members of the Indo-European family is 
in this respect governed by very different rules. In the 
Latin, the stress of voice is laid on either the penult or 
antepenult of a polysyllable, and the choice between them 
is strictly determined by quantity. In the Greek, it rests 
on one of the last three syllables, and is only in part fixed 


1] myself, many years ago (Journ. Am. Or. Soc. v. 215, 1856), compared it 
with the different treatment of the German verb, as regards position, in the two 
kinds of clauses (the verb following next after its subject in an independent, but 
being put off to the end of a dependent clause); but unfortunately the analogy, 
though not without interest, is one that explains nothing. Delbriick, in his 
Gebrauch des Conjunctivs und Optativs (1871, pp. 97,98), suggests a theory, but 
it has nothing in it that at all satisfies my mind. I do not know that any one 
else has touched upon the subject. 

2 I drew out and illustrated the rules bearing upon this subject in 1856, in a 
paper entitled Contributions from the Atharva-Veda to the Theory of Sanskrit 
Verbal Accent, published in the fifth volume of Jowrm. Am. Or. Soc’y. The 
paper was reproduced the next year, in German translation, by Kuhn, in the 
first volume of his Beitrdge zur vergleichenden Sprachforschung, and has since 
been repeatedly laid at the basis of further discussions of the same subject (so 
by Kielhorn in Weber’s Jndische Studien, x. 404 seg. ; by Mayr in the Proceed- 
ings of the Vienna Academy [Phil.-hist. Classe], vol. lxviii. [1871], p. 219 seg.). 


336 . THE SANSKRIT ACCENT. 


by their quantity. In the Germanic tongues, an accent 
which perhaps began with being a first-syllable one has 
become prevailingly ‘“ logical,’ making prominent the 
radical or most fundamentally significant syllable. No 
such system as this is found in the Slavonic branch, 
though next of kin to the Germanic; nor do the Slavonic 
dialects agree with one another: the Polish accents the 
penult ; the Bohemian, the initial syllable ; the Russian, 
any syllable. Among the Celtic dialects, the Welsh 
agrees with the Polish, and the Irish with the Bohemian. 
Of course, at the outset, in the time of Indo-European 
unity, the common language from which all these have 
descended had a definite system of accentuation, from 
which the various systems mentioned have come by grad- 
ual alteration. That tongues so nearly related as Welsh 
and Irish, as Russian and Bohemian and Polish, have so 
discordant accent, proves sufficiently the great mutability 
of this element of utterance. General euphonic tenden- 
cies, changes of national taste and preference, set in, and 
work over into a new shape the laws of accentual stress. 
Professor Hadley, in the essay already repeatedly re- 
ferred to here, has suggested (pp. 120, 124) conjectur- 
ally the specific tendencies, toward certain cadences or 
successions of graded tones at the end of a word, which 
may have determined the form assumed by the Greek 
and Latin accent. Where there is such mutability and 
variety, we have no right to expect to find that any lan- 
guage has held fast to the original system. But there 
may be recognizable differences in the degree of their 
adherence. And the stricter the uniformity, the more 
rigid the determination by general laws of position or 
quantity, of the place of accent in a language, the greater 
is the probability of a secondary development in that lan- 
guage. ‘Tried by this test, the Sanskrit accent is the 
most original among the recorded systems of the ancient 
languages of the family. It is governed by no rules. 


THE SANSKRIT ACCENT. 337 


either of position or of quantity ; it rests upon that sylla- 
ble to which the laws of derivation or composition assign 
it, whether the syllable be long or short, and whatever its 
position in a word of whatever length. For example, it 
being the rule that in an augmented verbal form the 
augment takes the accent, we have not only dbhit and 
dbhavat, but also dbhavishi, dbhavishvahi, dbobhiydmahi, 
etc. Again, the passive participle is always accented on 
its ending ta: thus, gribhitd, ‘comprehended.’ If such a 
word is reversed by the negative prefix, that prefix is ac- 
cented: thus, dgribhita, ‘uncomprehended.’ If, further, 
a word like this is used as first member of a compound, 
the accent is different according to the character and 
meaning of the compound: a mere determinative com- 
pound generally throws forward the accent, and we should 
have agribhitagocis, ‘ uncomprehended brightness,’ which 
would not change accent by increment of syllables in de- 
clension, but would form agribhitagocishas, etc.; but if 
the idea of possession be added, so that the word is an 
adjective, ‘ having incomprehensible brightness,’ the rule 
is that the first member retains its own accent; and we 
have dgribhitagocishas. And so on, through as many 
more examples as one may select. 

There would seem to be no reasonable question that a 
state of things like this is more primitive than that which 
prevails in Greek, or Latin, or Germanic, or Welsh, or 
Irish. And there is involved in it a precious possibility 
that some of the secrets of the earliest Indo-European 
word-formation may have light cast upon them by the 
phenomena of Sanskrit accentuation. If we belong to 
the modern school of historical philology, we believe that 
polysyllabic words and forms first grew up by the subor- 
dination of certain independently significant radical syl- 
lables to others, in collocation with which they had be- 
fore been uttered — by their concretion, as it were, about 


a nucleus; that there was first a reduction of accented 
22 


338 : THE SANSKRIT ACCENT. 


words to proclitics or enclitics, and then a fusion of the 
aggregate into a unit. In the growing together of such 
a compound unit, that syllable would naturally become 
the accented one which in the collocation had been the 
emphatic one; the less prominent atoms would be sub- 
ordinated to the most important. General laws and ten- 
dencies, dominating bodies of words or the whole vocab- 
ulary of a language, would not arise until later. If, then, 
Wwe can approach near enough to the first processes of 
accretion, the possession of a primitive accentuation may 
have such hints to give us as to the comparative value of 
the elements at the moment of union, as shall help us in 
the difficult task of explaining the genesis of the forma- 
tive syllables. Perhaps the hope is a too sanguine one; 
and certainly we have no right lightly to assume that the 
accent of Sanskrit forms is absolutely primitive and un- 
altered ; but the subject is worthy of the most careful 
investigation, which it has not yet received. Meanwhile, 
the Sanskrit accent has at least been used to furnish an 
explanation of a wide-spread and important phonetic 
phenomenon in Indo-European language — namely, the 
guna, or strengthening of 2 and uw to ai and au im large 
classes of very ancient forms.! 

The father of comparative philology, Bopp, in his 
“Comparative Accentuation of Greek and Sanskrit” 
(Berlin, 1854), failed to derive from the accent any re- 
sults of value for the genesis of forms; and doubtless in 
great measure because he conceived himself to discover 
in the accentual phenomena a general law — namely, that 
‘the farthest retraction of the stress of voice toward the 
beginning of the word was regarded as the accentuation 
-of greatest dignity and force ” — holding to this law with 

1 The explanation is one which has been accepted by many comparative 
philologists, although not by all. I have attempted to sustain it, as against the 
contrary view of Schleicher and the objections of Professor Peile, in an article 


presented to the London Philological Society, and published in its Transactions 
for 1874. ’ 


THE SANSKRIT ACCENT. 339 


great persistency through the whole work, nowhere seem- 
ing to contemplate the possible existence of a principle 
more primitive, nor inquiring whether any of the facts 
inconsistent with it of which he takes notice may not be 
original, and find their explanation in the earliest proc- 
esses of growth. ‘The alleged law or principle is in fact 
without any even tolerable support in the facts of the 
language, and has been let drop quietly out of sight ; 
never having won, I believe, the assent of any other 
prominent scholar.t The treatise in which it appears is 
marred. by other important errors of theory, and has 
value chiefly as an exhibition of the interesting corre- 
spondences which, in spite of the disguising operation of 
later phonetic tendencies in the Greek, still subsist be- 
tween the phenomena of accent of that language and 
those of the Sanskrit. 

The only other attempt made to find a special princi- 
ple of accentuation for the Sanskrit is that of Benfey, 
who declares that the language lays the stress of voice 
upon the last modifying addition, whether prefix or suffix, 
to the exclusion of the root or theme itself ; adding, how- 
ever, that this original principle has been, in the progress 
of development of the language, supplanted in some in- 
stances by other word-shaping influences. To this, Bopp 
remarks, in the work just referred to (note 35, p. 238), 
that he would have been nearer the truth had he said 
“in most instances,” inasmuch as in the great majority 
of the facts as they lie before us the law is violated. — 
Benfey has not given himself the trouble to defend and 
establish his theory, but is content barely to state it, with 
an illustration or two, leaving it to his readers for accept- 
ance or rejection, as they shall please; probably most 
will agree with Bopp in disposing of it in the latter way, 
since it seems to find sufficient support neither in the 


1 So far as I know, no one even took the pains to refute it in detail excepting 
myself, in Journ. Am. Or. Soc. vy. (1856), 205-212. 


340 THE SANSKRIT ACCENT. 


facts, as a general law of secondary origin, nor in sound 
theory, as a primitive principle. In the very earliest 
concretion of syllables into words, a “ logical” accent, 
distinguishing the radical syllable, would seem theoret- 
ically more probable ; but whether this be so, and when 
and to what extent the opposite principle, of accenting ~ 
the last modifier, should come in, are questions to be 
determined only by the most penetrating and cautious 
inquiry. And until such inquiry is made, and conducted 
to a successful conclusion, it is safest to hold our opinions 
in suspense, not suffering them to be taken captive by 
any plausible but superficial generalizations. The high- 
est interest of the Sanskrit accent lies, probably, in its 
bearing upon the history of Indo-European forms; and 
the time cannot be far distant when it will be thoroughly 
investigated with reference to this side of its value. __ 


XI. 


ON THE LUNAR ZODIAC OF INDIA, 
ARABIA, AND CHINA. 


—G—— 


A HIGH degree of interest belongs to all inquiries into 
the beginnings of astronomical science, both on their own 
account and because of the light which they cast upon 
the intercourse and mutual influence of ancient peoples. 
And notwithstanding all the labor which has been de- 
voted to the subject, it still presents a host of difficult 
and controverted points, which must for a long time con- 
tinue to attract the attention of the learned. One of the 
most conspicuous of these controverted points is the char- 
acter and origin of what we may call the lunar zodiac, or 
the system of lunar mansions —a division of the plane- 
tary path into twenty-seven or twenty-eight parts, pre- 
sumably founded upon the sidereal revolution of the 
moon in between twenty-seven and twenty-eight days. 
This institution is found to constitute an important ele- 
ment in the astronomy of the leading races of Asia — of 
the Chinese, the Hindus, and the Arabs — while traces of 
it are found also in other countries. Where it origin- 
ated, and whence and how it spread, is a question which 
has of late provoked a lively, almost a sharp, discussion ; 
and if just at present it seems to be quiescent, this is 
hardly because any general agreement of opinion has 
been reached, but rather because those who were con- 
tending over it have turned aside to other matters. I 
propose here, in as simple and popular a manner as the 


342 | THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 


subject admits, to review the discordant opinions, and the 
grounds upon which they have claimed to be founded. 

A main part of what may be called the astronomical 
science of ancient nations has lain in, or has grown out 
of, their attempts at reconciling the discordant natural 
measures or divisions of time, and setting up a regulated 
calendar. No chronological period, of course, is so elemen- 
tary and obvious, so forced upon men’s attention, as the ~ 
day, with its natural subdivision of day and night — the 
period, astronomically speaking, of the earth’s rotation on 
her axis, as slightly modified by her revolution about the 
sun. A human language with no word for “ day ” in it 
would be an inconceivable anomaly. A next longer 
natural unit, convenient for the reckoning of more ex- 
tended periods of time, is the real month, the period of 
waxing and waning of the earth’s satellite, measured 
either from new moon to new moon or from full moon to 
full moon — astronomieally, the period of synodical revo- 
lution of the moon. And it is doubtful whether any 
tribe or people was ever met with, so careless of the oper- 
ations and manifestations of nature, and so restricted in 
its chronological needs, as never to have measured time 
by ‘“‘ moons ’’—or by ‘* months,” as we say, using for 
the period a name which is not the same with that for 
the heavenly body, though derived from it. Of the 
month there is no natural subdivision ; some have con- 
jectured that the seven-day period, or week, was origin- 
ally arrived at by a division of it into quarters. Once 
more, a yet longer period is the year, as really deter- 
mined in length by the earth’s revolution about the sun, 
and in the changes of its seasons by the inclination of 
the earth’s axis to the plane of its orbit. The year is 
brought to notice principally by meteorological phenom- 
ena, by the alternations of season, partly also by the 
varying length of the day; for the mere fact of the 
changing elevation of the sun’s apparent track is (except 


THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 843 


in high latitudes), comparatively unimportant. And the 
year assumes different degrees of prominence as a period, 
according to the natural conditions of each region and 
the occupations and mode of life of each community ; 
dwellers in or near the tropics, and of pastoral or no- 
madic habit, have it least foreed upon their attention. 
Its distinct conception and naming as a period, its accu- 
rate measurement, and yet more the proper connection 
of its phenomena with the sun’s apparent movement — 
all these are results of a closer, a longer-continued, a 
more scientifically conducted process of observation than 
is needed for the day or month. 

- But farther, each of these periods is incommensurable 
with the other two. The month is no precise number of 
days; the year is no precise number of days, or of 
months. How shall this be reconciled, so that the reck- 
oning of each period shall go on harmoniously with that 
of the others? On what day shall the new month be 
reckoned to begin? On what day, or with what month, 
shall the new year be reckoned to begin? ‘These are 
questions of which the solution has been the perpetual 
problem of many a race, and which have been answered 
in very various ways. We will notice only two or three 
typical methods. 3 

In our own practice, the moon has been sacrificed. 
Our year, to be sure, is made up of twelve so-called 
‘¢ months,” and their number is due to the fact that the 
moon makes her synodical revolution more nearly twelve 
than thirteen times in a year; but our “ month” is an 
arbitrary period, a mere conventional approximation in 
length to the true month, and notatall regulated by the 
phases of the moon, which may begin its wax or its wane 
on any day between the first and the thirty-first. By 
this sacrifice, we are enabled to make our years of very 
nearly equal length, varying only between 3865 and 366 
days ; and a day intercalated nearly every four years, and 


344 » THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 


counted in at an arbitrarily selected point, easily and al- 
most imperceptibly maintains the desired balance. And 
we prize the meteorological uniformity of our dates more 
than the minor uniformity of lunar age which we have 
given up for it. The Arab, on the other hand, and after 
his example the whole Mohammedan world, sacrifices the 
year to the month. He reckons, indeed, by so-called 
‘“‘vears,” and of equal length; but they are no real 
years ; they are periods of twelve real months each, or of 
854 days; the new moon is watched for as an actual 
phenomenon, and the beginning of the month never 
swerves from it; but the seasons shift rapidly through 
the whole succession of months, so that winter and sum- 
mer exchange places with one another about once in 
seventeen years. The Hindu, once more, follows a much 
more intricate system, whereby an equal compromise is 
made among all the three periods:! his month is of 
twenty-nine or of thirty days, by a rule which keeps the 
reckoned succession as close to the moon’s synodical 
movement as is our year to the earth’s revolution; and 
the intercalation of a month, instead of merely a day, 
made at fixed intervals, keeps the beginning of the year 
always within a certain distance of a fixed point in the 
earth’s revolution. The inconvenience of this arrange- 
ment, aside from its greater intricacy (but that the al- 
manac-makers attend to), is the inequality of the year, 
which varies between 854 and 383 days; still, to those 
who are used to it, this seems an insignificant thing as 
compared with the utter neglect of the natural month of 
which we of the West are guilty. 

These are representative instances, illustrate the 
three principal methods of chronological adjustment: one 
sacrifices the natural month to the year; another gives 
up the year for the month; the third pays strict and 
equal regard to both. 


i The year, to be sure, is of precisely the character here described only in a 
part of India. 


THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 345 


The natural periods need nothing but the ordinary ex- 
periences of men in common life to bring them to notice 
and impress them. Buta higher and more enlightened 
curiosity, which seeks to trace phenomena to their causes, 
soon succeeds in making out a connection between them 
and the movements of the heavenly bodies. As regards 
the day, indeed, the connection is flatly palpable; the 
revolution of the sun by day, continued by the revolution, 
in the same direction and at the same rate, of the starry 
heavens by night, is a cause ‘‘as plain as the sun in the 
heavens,” according to our proverbial expression. And 
some of the ancient philosophers, a thousand or two of 
years before Copernicus, were acute enough to see be- 
neath the surface of the phenomena, and to perceive not 
only that the earth was round, but also that its turning 
on its axis was the real cause of the apparent circling of 
the firmament about it. A little more careful observa- 
tion was needed to show that, while the moon moved 
about us with the rest, she also had an additional round 
of her own among the stars, in the contrary direction ; 
and that her regular increase and decrease were owing to 
her approaching the sun on this round, and then, after 
temporary disappearance in his rays, to her receding 
from him on the opposite side. Anda yet more pene- 
trating and enlightened quest detected the sun doing the 
sume thing, only at a slower rate. His course amid the 
stars could not be traced out, like the moon’s, by direct 
observation ; it had to be inferred from the successive ex- 
tinction of the constellations as he advanced upon them, 
and their restoration to view in his rear. But, by those 
who had the patience to observe and the skill to infer, 
the idea of the sun’s yearly progress about the firmament, 
upon an unvarying track, and a track not identical with 
the equator but crossing it at two definite points and 
making a certain angle with it — this idea was reached 
and held with entire distinctness and correctness, and 


346 | THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 


constituted a fundamental step in the developing science 
of astronomy. 

From this idea there sprang forth another — namely, 
that of dividing the track thus recognized into parts, suc- 
cessively traversed in successive periods by the great 
luminary, and of defining and naming the parts. The 
result was the familiar system of the twelve zodiacal 
signs. When and by whom the system was invented, 
and by what steps it won its currency, are mooted ques- 
tions, which we have no occasion here to discuss. But 
the general character of the institution is clear enough. 
The number of twelve, as no one can reasonably doubt, 
came from the nearly twelvefold division of the year into 
months: one sign, as nearly as the perverse incommen- 
surability of year and month permitted, was to be trav- 
ersed in each month. And the construction of the 
system consisted in the selection of twelve groups of stars, 
lying upon or near to the sun’s track, and fairly equidis- 
tant from one another; each of which should be regarded 
as occupying, and by its presence marking, and by its 
name designating, an equal twelfth part of the circle. 
Thus for the first time there came to be a means of 
rudely marking the place of the planetary bodies in the 
sky: to say that the sun, or the moon, or Mars, was in 
the Ram or the Virgin, or, more precisely, in a certain 
part of either, was to define their position with such accu- 
racy as the state of astronomical science permitted. 
Though the groups of stars were of unequal extent and un- 
evenly distributed, they answered well. enough their pur- 
pose of marking equal divisions in the sky; it was not 
till science had taken many more steps forward, and till 
methods and instruments of observation implying consid- 
erable precision were put to use, that any one could have 
laid down the boundaries of the duodecimal divisions with 
any approach to exactness. 

Such were the twelve Signs of the Zodiac: a pln 


THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 347 


very familiar to us, because of its prominence in the 
Greek astronomy, and its transmission to us by our Greek 
teachers. An institution of this character easily makes 
its way from people to people, in connection with the 
transier of increased knowledge in a definite department, 
and without necessarily implying an intimate intercourse ; 
between giver and receiver, or any profound influence of 
a wider scope exerted by the one upon the other. In 
such matters (just as in chemistry or geology with us), 
the community follows the lead of a few specially quali- 
fied persons ; and the chance meeting of two advanced 
students of science, or the journey of a single philosopher 
to a distant reputed centre of knowledge, might have for 
its consequence the introduction into a new country of a 
successful explanation of what its deep thinkers had been 
already observing and reasoning about, or of a practical 
means of more exact observation. Possibly, it should be 
added, an application to superstitious uses would be the 
most effective of all aids to the introduction and spread 
of a new system of astronomy. 

Another instance of a mode of scientific division 
founded on the relations of the natural periods is seen in 
our treatment of the circle. We reckon three htmdred 
and sixty degrees to a circle, because that is the manage- 
able whole number which stands nearest to the number 
of days in the year ; each degree is, as nearly as the ex- 
igencies of convenient use permit, that part of the sun’s 
yearly revolution which he accomplishes in each daily 
revolution. 

We are now prepared to consider the formation of the 
analogous and kindred institution which constitutes the 
special subject of this essay. 

It has been already noticed that there is in use among 
certain Oriental nations a system of division of the plan- 
etary path into twenty-seven or twenty-eight parts, each 
marked by a group of stars and named from that group. 


348 ; THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 


By the Arabs, the parts are called mandézil al-kamar, 
‘mansions of the moon, lunar stations;’ the Chinese 
know them simply as stew, ‘mansions;’ by the Hindus 
they are denominated, yet more undistinctively, naksha- 
tras,‘ asterisms.’ We have only to note the number and 
“the names, and the fact that the moon makes her sidereal 
revolution, from a given star back to the same, in between 
twenty-seven and twenty-eight days,! to draw at once, at 
least provisionally, the inference that the intent of the 
system must have been to mark, as nearly as the cireum- 
stances of the case admitted, the successive daily steps of 
the moon’s progress around the heavens. Of course, we 
ean abandon this opinion hereafter, if it shall be proved 
ill-founded. But in order to understand better what 
would be the character of a system formed with the in- 
tent stated, we need to note certain facts relating to the 
moon’s movement. 

The makers of a lunar zodiac have over the makers of 
a solar zodiac the advantage that they are able to follow 
the track of the determining luminary amid the stars by 
direct observation, impeded only by the circumstance that 
its brilliancy extinguishes the smaller stars about it. If, 
then, ‘the moon, like the sun, never departed from the 
line of the ecliptic, and if she moved always with an equal 
velocity in the same part of this line, we might reason- 
ably expect that stars or groups immediately upon the 
ecliptic would be selected, and such as marked quite 
accurately the limits of a day’s motion — though that odd 
remnant, of about a third of a day more than twenty- 
seven, would still come in as a disturbing element, to be 
in some way disposed of. But this is not the way in which 
the moon makes her round. In the first place, while her 
daily rate of motion, like the sun’s, varies quite notably, 
and while this variation is cumulative, so that in one part 
of her revolution she is six or seven degrees behind, and 

1 Exactly, 274 7h 43m 11.48, or 27.3217—. 


THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 349 


in another part as much in advance of her mean place, it 
is not the case, as with the sun, that her retardation and 
acceleration take place always in the same region of the 
heavens ; on the contrary, as her line of apsides revolves 
once in a little less than nine years, the variation of 
velocity is rapidly shifting its action, and she will be, 
during the period of nine years, in every part of the 
heavens a whole asterism in advance or in rear of the 
position she occupied in her revolution four years and a 
half before, when of the same mean sidereal age. What 
is of not less consequence, she revolves, not in the ecliptic, 
but in an orbit which is inclined to that circle a little 
more than five degrees ; and the line of her nodes is also 
in rapid motion, making the circuit of the heavens once 
in about eighteen years; so that if at any time a line of 
measuring stars had been selected just upon her path, she 
would pass them nine years later at distances from them 
ranging all the way up to ten degrees. Nor must we 
leave out of account that, during a good part of each 
round, her light is so brilhant as to obliterate entirely all 
but the brighter stars with which she comes closely in 
contact or near to which she passes, and the fainter ones 
at a still greater distance; so that to mark her course by 
such stars only as are to be found immediately along the 
ecliptic would be unpractical ; they would in many cases 
not be visible when she was at one or two or three aster- 
isms’ distance. 

Thus all the conditions which would lead imperatively 
to a choice of stars or groups of stars separated by pre- 
cisely equal intervals, or situated along one undeviating 
line, are entirely wanting. Nor should we expect a suc- 
cession of single stars to have been pitched upon; where 
exactness of interval was a secondary consideration, con- 
stellated groups had the advantage of being far more 
easily described, named, recognized, and remembered. 

Supposing, then, that a people whose only instrument 


350 ; THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 


of observation was the eye should have noticed the 
moon’s nearly equable movement through a certain re- 
gion of the heavens, and the completion of her revolu- 
tion in twenty-seven or twenty-eight days, and, feeling 
impelled to mark and define the stages of her progress, 
should set about choosing a means of definition among 
the stars through which she passed — what would they 
naturally seek in their selection? Obviously, I think, 
they would look for groups of stars, as conspicuous as the 
heavens furnished in the proper position, not too remote 
in either direction from the ecliptic, and tolerably evenly 
distributed, so that, at any rate, no considerable part of 
the series should be far away from the average place re- 
. quired by a division of the ecliptic region into nee 
equal portions: and nothing more than this. 

The three Oriental systems of division, now — Hindu, 
Arab, Chinese —to which reference has been made 
above, and which are the only ones known to us in detail, 
are precisely of this character. Moreover, they are but 
three somewhat varying forms of the same original. 
Of course, it is not impossible that the idea of such a 
mode of division of the heavens—a lunar zodiac, as we 
have called it— should suggest itself independently to 
different peoples, and should be carried out independently 
in different countries by the selection of different star- 
groups. But an actual comparison of the Hindu, Arab, 
and Chinese zodiacs shows such numerous and striking 
coincidences between them as totally exclude any theory 
of the diversity of their origin. In order to demonstrate 
this, and to make plain their general character and rela- 
tions, I give here a brief. description, identification, and 
nomenclature of the three series of groups, beginning 
with that member which is reckoned as first in the oldest 
Hindu records; and I add at the end of the volume a 
chart, by help of which they may be the better under- 
stood, or may be traced out. in the sky by any one who 


THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 351 


shall feel enough interest in the matter to take the 
trouble. | 


1. The first asterism is in all the three systems the same group: 
namely, the Pleiades (y Tauri, etc.). The Hindus call it Krittika (of 
doubtful meaning); to the Arabs, it is Thuraiya, ‘little thick-set 
group,’ or Najm, ‘constellation ;’ the Chinese name, Mao, is also 
of doubtful meaning.? 

2. The second station is marked by the group of Hyades (a, @, y, 
3, « Tauri: the Chinese add the neighboring A and o). Its Hindu 
name is Rohini, ‘ruddy,’ doubtless from the conspicuously reddish 
hue of its principal star, a Tauri, which we call Aldebaran, from the 
Arabic name of the station, Dabaran, ‘ follower’ (perhaps as being 
the sequens or secundus of the primitive series). The Chinese call it 
Pi, ‘ hand-net.’ 

3. The third determining group is the little triangle of faint stars 
in Orion’s head, or A, ¢!, ¢? Orionis. The Hindus (see below, p. 404) 
_ figure Orion as a stag, and this group is Mrigaciras or Mrigagirsha, 
‘stag’s head ;’ the Arabs call the manzil Hak’ah, ‘ horse-mark ;’ 
sieu, it is named Tse, ‘ beak, pouting lips,’ etc. 

It is not a little strange that the framers of the system should have 
chosen for marking the third station this faint group, to the neglect 
of the brilliant and conspicuous pair, 8 and ¢ Tauri, or the tips of the 
Bull’s horns. There is hardly another case where we have so much 
reason to find fault with their selection. 


1 For further explanations of the chart, see at the end of this article. It is a 
reproduction of one given in the Translation of the Sirya-Siddhanta, a Text- 
book of Hindu Astronomy, published in 1860, in the sixth volume of the Jour= 
nal of the American Oriental Society (and also in a separate edition). In the 
notes to the eighth chapter of that work, I have given a more detailed discus- 
sion of the coincidences and discordances of the three systems, and especially a 
much fuller exhibition of the evidence on which the identifications of the vari- 
ous groups are founded. As regards the Hindu “ asterisms”’ (nakshatra) and the 
Arab ‘stations’? (mandzil, singular manzil), I rely solely on those notes, and 
would refer to them any one who.may wish for more information. Re- 
specting the Chinese stations (siew), I follow two authorities formerly not ac- 
cessible to me: namely, Sédillot’s Matériaux pour servir a V histoire comparée 
des sciences mathématiques chez les Grecs et les Orientaux (Paris, 1845-49, p. 476 
seq. and Tableau B), and J. Williams’s Observations of Comets, extracted from 
the Chinese Annals (London, 1871). The Chinese groups are determined with 
almost entire accordance, though independently, by Sédillot and Williams, and 
the star-charts given by the latter, from Chinese sources, at the end of his vol- 
ume, help to make the identifications trustworthy (although there are two or 
three, as is pointed out below, which remain doubtful). On our chart, only 
the star in each group called by Biot its determinant (see below, p. 389) is 
marked, by an inclosed figure. 

2 Sédillot renders it ‘soutien des choses de la nature.’ 


852 | THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 


4. At this point there is great discordance among the systems. 
The Hindu asterism, Ardra, ‘ moist,’ appears to be the brilliant « 
Orionis, while the Chinese Tsan, ‘three’ (originally the trio in 
Orion’s belt ?) includes the seven conspicuous stars marking the 
shoulders, belt, and knees of Orion; thus effectually enveloping its 
predecessor, whose province it reduces to a mere fragment. There 
is probably some decided later corruption here. The Arab manzil, 
Han’ah, ‘the pile,’ has been moved, with good judgment, nearer to 
the ecliptic, and is made up of the stars in the feet of the Twins, or 
1; M, ¥; y, € Geminorum ; or, according to some, of the last two only. 

5. Here the Hindu and Arab systems come to accordance again, 
adopting as determining group of the station the bright pair, a and B 
Geminorum, in the heads of Castor and Pollux. The Hindu name is 
Punarvasti, ‘ the two good again ;’ the Arabic title is Dhira’, ‘the 
paw,’ (2. e. of the Lion, which the Arab astronomers stretch out over 
a much larger region of the sky than he occupies with us). The 
Chinese sieu, Tsing, ‘well, pit,’ is made up of eight stars in the 
same constellation, or ¢, d, ¢,A,&, 7, », 4 Geminorum, including sev- 
eral of those which marked the preceding manzil. 

6. This asterism is practically the same in all: namely, the faint- 
ish group in the body of the Crab. To y and 6 Cancri, its most con- 
spicuous members, the nakshatra Pushya, ‘ flower,’ or Tishya, adds @ ; 
the manzil Nathrah, ‘ nose-gap’ (7. e. of the Lion), includes the nebu- 
lous Preesepe; the siew Kwei, ‘ spectre,’ adds @ and 7. 

7. This time it is the Hindus and Chinese who agree to mark their 
station by the same group, that in the head of Hydra. The Chinese 
Lieu, ‘willow,’ is made up of 7, o, 5, €, p, ¢,, and @ Hydre; the 
Hindu Aclesha, ‘embracer,’ includes the first five or six of them. 
But the Arab Tarf, ‘look,’ is far away to the northward, on the other 
side of the ecliptic, just between the sixth and eighth nakshatra and 
manzil; it is composed of  Cancri and A Leonis. 

8. In their eighth, ninth, and tenth members the Hindu and Arab 
series are closely accordant, while the Chinese goes off upon an in- 
dependent track, far in the south, nearly following the line of junction 
between the seventh and eleventh members.1 The eighth manzil is 
called Jabhah, ‘forehead,’ and comprises, along with the brilliant «a 
Leonis (Regulus), the three stars next above him in the “ Sickle ;” 
the nakshatra Magha, ‘generous,’ includes the whole Sickle, or a, 7, 
7,6 € Leonis. The siew Sing, ‘star,’ is composed of a and . 
Hydree, with five other smaller stars near them.? 

1 According to Biot, following the equator of 2350 B. c.; see below, p. 385, and 
compare the chart. 

2 The identification of this group is very difficult. Sédillot specifies also 


vl, 72 as belonging to it; I cannot make out the figure given by Williams by 
including them. 


THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 353 


| 9. Here, asin two other caseslater, the Hindu system combines 
two groups which mark successive stations, as forming together a 
single definite figure or constellation, and calls them by the same 
name, distinguishing them as “ former ” (pirva) and “ latter ” (uitara). 
The double group including the ninth and tenth asterisms is a con- 
spicuous rectangle in the northeast corner of the Lion, made up of 
8, 9, 8, and 93 Leonis; it is called Phalguni (of doubtful meaning). 
Piirva-Phaleuni, ‘the former Phalguni,’ is marked by 5 and @; and 
the Arab manzil, Zubrah, ‘ mane,’ contains the same two stars. The 
corresponding sieu, Chang, ‘ drawn bow,’ is composed of x, v!,1 A, pu, $4, 
and another small star in Hydra. 

10. The tenth nakshatra is Uttara-Phalouni, ‘latter Phalguni,’ and 
is made up of the two eastern stars of the rectangle already de- 
scribed, or g and 93 Leonis. The manzil Sarfah, ‘turn,’ is marked 
by 6 alone. The stew Y or Yih, ‘ wings, flanks,’ contains twenty-two 
stars, including all the conspicuous ones in Crater, with their neigh- 
bors in Hydra.? 

11. At this point, the Hindu and Chinese systems come once more 
to an agreement, while the Arabic follows an independent course, 
choosing again (as at the fourth station) a group that lies nearly 
midway between its tenth and twelfth members — namely, B, 7, 7, 
5, « Virginis ; its name is Auwa’, ‘barking dog.’ The Hindu group 
is called Hasta, ‘hand,’ and is made up of the five conspicuous stars 
in Corvus (4, «, ¥, 5, 8) ; the sieu, Chin, ‘cross-piece of a chariot,’ 
contains only 8B, 4, y, and e. 

12. As regards the twelfth station, all the systems agree, marking 
it by the beautiful star a Virginis, or Spica; the Chinese sieu, Kio, 
‘horn,’ alone adding another star to the northward, doubtless ¢ Vir- 
ginis. The Hindu name of the asterism is Citra, ‘bright ;’ the 
Arabs call it Simak (of doubtful meaning). | 

13. This time it is the turn of the Hindu series to deviate from 
the other two, in order to bring in from far in the north the single 
brilliant star Arcturus, or a Bootis; its usual name is Svati (of ob- 
scure meaning). The siew Kang, ‘man’s neck,’ is marked by A, xk, 
; (or v) Virginis; the manzil, Ghafr, ‘covering,’ by the two or 
three first mentioned of the same group. 

14. In the fourteenth and several following asterisms, there is no 
essential discordance among the systems. The fourteenth manzil, 


1 Williams copies Biot’s blunder (made originally, doubtless, by a confusion 
of the two so similar letters) in calling this star everywhere v1. 

2 Sédillot names half the number: a, @, 4, e, ¢, , 9,1, A, v Crateri, and x 
Hydre; but I entirely fail to trace Williams’s figure by their aid —or, indeed, 
in any other way. 


854 THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 


Zubinan, ‘ the two claws,’ 7. e. of the Scorpion (some of the Greek 
authorities give the same name to what we call the constellation 
Libra), is composed of the conspicuous pair, a and B Libre. The 
siew is called Ti (of doubtful meaning), and adds: and y Libre, 
which form with the other two a nearly square figure; and the Hindu 
Vicakha, ‘ branched,’ seems according to the later authorities to be 
composed of precisely the same four stars ; while earlier it was com- 
monly reckoned as a dual asterism, of a and £ only. 

15. The determining group is called by the Arabs Iklil, ‘crown,’ and 
contains 8,5, and x Scorpionis; the Hindu Anuradha, ‘ propitious,’ 
is either the same or adds the neighboring p; the Chinese Fang, 
“room, house,’ includes all the four. 

16. The Chinese group Sin, ‘heart,’ and the Hindu Jyeshtha, 
‘eldest,’ are made up of the same three stars, o, a, and + Scorpionis, ~ 
of which the central one, a, is the brilliant reddish Antares (or cor 
Scorpionis). This star alone marks the Arab station Kalb, ‘ heart.’ | 

17. The tail of the Scorpion is the determinative of this station 
alike in all the systems. _But to the manzil Shaulah, ‘sting,’ are 
ascribed only the conspicuous pair, A and v, at its extremity. The 
Hindus call the same stars Vicritdu, ‘the two releasers,’ and some- 
times regard them alone as composing the asterism ; usually, how- 
ever, all the nine (or eleven), from ¢« around tov, are included, and 
the nakshatra is named Mala, ‘root.’ The Chinese Wei, ‘tail,’ is 
made up of the whole number. 

18. The sieu Ki, ‘sieve,’ is composed of y, 5, «, and » Sagittarii 
(the last of them known also as 6 Telescopii) ; the nakshatra, called 
the former Ashaédha, ‘unconquered,’ either includes all the four, or, 
according to other authorities, only § and « Here occurs, namely, 
another of those pairs already referred to (see above, under the 
ninth asterism); and according as the whole double group, or each 
of the single groups, is reckoned as containing four stars, the consti- 
tution of the asterism is varied. The Arabic Na’aim, ‘ pasturing 
cattle,’ comprehends all the eight. 

19. The Hindu nakshatra, latter Ashadha, is made up either of 
¢, 7, T, ¢ Sagittarii, or of « and ¢ alone ; according to the latter un- 
derstanding, « and ¢ along with 5 and e form the quadrate figure 
which is characteristic of the double asterisms. The Chinese sieu, 
Teu, ‘measure (for grain),’ includes the four, as also A and » on the 
north, and another (not identifiable) to the southward. The Arabs, 
whom we have seen to include this group in one asterism with the 
preceding, mark their nineteenth station by a space vacant of stars 
above the head of Sagittarius, bounded by 7 and other faint stars ; 
they call it Baldah, ‘town.’ | . 


THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 855 


20. In this and the two following stations, the Hindu system makes 
a great leap into the northern hemisphere, in order to bring in con- 
spicuous groups from that quarter. Their twentieth asterism, 
Abhijit, ‘ victorious,’ lies at 60° north latitude, being the brilliant 
Lyrz, with its two humble companions e and ¢~ The Arab manzi/, 
Sa’d adh-Dhabih, ‘ felicity of the sacrificer,’ is marked by a and B 
Capricorni, just north of the ecliptic ; the Chinese Nieu, ‘ ox,’ contains 
the same, with y, and three other faint stars (7, p, and o) farther 
south. 

21. The northern Hindu group is called Cravana, ‘ ear,’ or Cron, 
‘Jame,’ and contains three stars, the bright q Aquile, with g below 
and y above it. The manzil and sieu agree in position: the former, 
Sa’d Bula’, ‘felicity of a devourer,’ is made up of ¢,, and v 
Aquarii ; the latter, Nii, ‘woman,’ adds another (not identifiable) 
from the neighborhood. 

22. The Hindu asterism is the diamond-shaped group in the Dol- 
phin, a, 8,5, and y Delphini, some adding also ¢: it is called Cra- 
vishtha, ‘most famous,’ or Dhanisheha. ‘richest.’ Again "the 
manzil and sieu are the same, being marked by 8 and ~ Aquarii: the 
former is called Sa’d as-Su’id, ‘felicity of felicities ;’ the latter, 
Hiu, ‘ void.’ 

23. At this station, the Hindu system comes back to the ecliptic 
for its determining group, adopting A Aquarii, with the stars about 
it, to the indefinite number of a hundred, and calling the asterism 
Catabhishaj, ‘hundred-physician.’ No group of such a number can 
well be made out without including the Arab and Chinese asterisms : 
the former consists of y, ¢, n, and probably m (or a) Aquarii, and is 
ealled Sa’d al-Akhbiyah, ‘ felicity of tents ;’ the latter, styled Goei, 
‘steep, danger,’ contains a Aquarii, and @ and e Pegasi, farther 
north. 

24. Once more all the systems come to an agreement together, 
adopting as the determinatives of this and the next station the two 
sides of the well-known constellation called by us the Square in Pe- 
gasus. The Hindus treat it as a double asterism, former and latter 
Bhadrapadas, ‘auspicious feet,’ or Proshthapadas, ‘ footstool-feet.’ 
The ‘‘ former ’’ group is composed of a and 8 Pegasi; and the same 
two stars constitute the Arab manzil Fargh al-Mukdim, ‘fore spout 
of the water-jar,’ and the Chinese sieu She, ‘ house.’ 

25. The “latter ” Bhadrapadas of the Hindus are the two stars, 
y Pegasi and a Andromedz, which form the other side of the Square; 
and they are also the Fargh al-Mukhir, ‘hind spout of the water- 
jar,’ of the Arabs, and the Pi, ‘ wall, partition,’ of the Chinese. 

26. The Hindus assign to the determining asterism of this station 


356 THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 


thirty-two stars, of which ¢ Piscium, close upon the ecliptic at the 
point where this was crossed by the equator of A. p. 570, is defined 
as the southernmost. We have no means of ascertaining the precise 
limits of the group; it may probably have reached so far north as to 
include the Arab and Chinese asterisms. It is named KRevati, 
‘wealthy.’ The Chinese group, Koei, ‘striding legs,’ is also a very 
extensive one, of at least sixteen stars, arranged somewhat like a 
figure 8, and reaching from ¥ Piscium up to vy Andromede ; its prin- 
cipal star, according to Biot, is ¢ Andromedz. The manzél Batn al- 
Hit, ‘fish’s belly,’ or Rishé, ‘band,’ contains more or less of the 
same group, reaching at least far enough north to take in the bright 
star g Andromedz; and this star is by some authorities regarded as 
by itself marking the twenty-sixth station. There is evidently here 
no essential discordance, although a perplexing disagreement in de- 
tail, among the three systems. 

27. The accordance in the last two members of the series is as 
close as could be desired. The Hindus acknowledge as twenty- 
seventh asterism the two stars 8 and y Arietis, in the head of the 
Ram, calling it Agvini, ‘ equestrian,’ or Agvayujau, ‘the two horse- 
harnessers;’ the Arabs give to the same pair the name Sharatain, ‘the 
two tokens’ (i. e., of the opening year) ; the Chinese (as do also some 
Hindu authorities) add a Arietis to the group, and they call it Leu, 
‘train of a garment.’ 

28. This station is marked by the little triangle in the northern 
part of Aries which is known as Musca (or 35, 39, and 41 Arietis) : 
the Hindus call it Bharani, ‘ bearer ;’ the Chinese, Oei, ‘ belly ;’1 the 
Arabs, Butain, ‘little belly’ (¢. e., of the Ram) — a name which, to be 
sure, would be better applicable to a more southern group; and some 
authorities point out the triangle e, 5, p* Arietis as determinant of the 
station, instead of Musca. 


No one, I am confident, can examine this exposition of 
the correspondences and differences of the three systems 
without being convinced that they are actually, as claimed 
above, three derivative forms of the same original. Pre- 
cisely what this original was, we cannot of course deter- 
mine; but we may make a plausible approximation to- 
ward restoring it by assuming that, wherever two of the 
three agree as opposed to the third, the latter has deviated 

1 The Chinese names of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and twenty-eighth aster- 


isms are worthy of note, as bearing to the Arabic a relation which can hardly be 
fortuitous. 


THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 857 


from the primitive system, which has been adhered to by 
the others. In order to present the results of our com- 
parison in a more readily comprehensible shape, I add 
below a table in which the probable original is in this 
manner established, and the groups peculiar to each sys- 
tem are given as variations from it. Here such minor 
discrepancies as those in the number of the stars regarded 
as composing the asterism are not taken into account. 


PRIMITIVE AND MODIFIED FORMS OF THE SYSTEM OF LUNAR 


ASTERISMS. 
Probable original con- 
stituents of the sys-) Hindu variations. Arab variations. Chinese variations. 
tem. 

1.4, etc. Tauri. Plei- 
ades. 

2. a, ete. Tauri. Hy- 
ades, 

3. A, 61, 62 Orionis. 

Head of Orion. 

4. 2 4. a Orionis. 4. n, nw, vy, € Gem-|4. a, y, 8, €, ¢, Ke, B 

inorum. rionis. 

5. a, 8 Geminorum. 5. by Vy ¥y &, 6, ete. 
Castor and Pol- Geminorum. 
lux. 

6. y, 5, ete. Cancri. 

Belly of Crab. 

7. 8, e, ete. Hydre. 7. ~ Cancri, \ Leo- 
Head of Hydra. nis. 

8. a Leonis (Regu- 8. a,t,etc. Hydre. 
lus) ete. Sickle. 

9. 5, @ Leonis. Rump 9. x, vl, A, m, ete. 
of Lion. Hydre. 

10. 8, 93 Leonis. 10. a, B, ete. ete. 
Tail of Lion. Crateris. 

11. a, «, y, ete. Cor- 11. B, n, y, 6, ¢ Vir- 

vi. The Crow. ginis. 


12. pean, Spi- 


13. ve x, t, etc. Vir-|13. a Bootis. Arc- 
ginis. Edge of turus. 
Virgin’s Robe. 

14. a, 6B Libre. 

Claws of Scor- 
pion. 

15. "3, 8 «x Scorpi- 
onis. 

16. o, a (Antares), 

7  Scorpionis. 
The Scorpion’s 
heart. 

17. ©, HS) 7, 6, by Ky 
A, v Scorpionis. 

Scorpion’ s tail. 


358 : THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 


Probable original con- ’ 
stituents of thesys-| Hindu variations. Arab variations. | Chinese variations. 
tem. 


18. 5, «, ete. Sagit- 
tarii- Bow of 


Sagittary. 

19. o, ¢,etc. Sagit- 19. Space near = 
tarii. Left shoul- Sagittarii. 
der of Sagittary. 


20. a, @ Capricorni. |20. ake (Vega) 
Head of Goat. 

Qi. «, My Vv Aquarii. 21. 2] wr Y Aquilee. 
Right hand of 
Waterbearer. 

22. 6, € Aquarii.|22. a, etc. Delphini. 
Right — shoulder 
ie Waterbear- 


23. 3 eae etc. iA tise 23. A,etc. ete. A- 23. a Aquarii, 0, e 
rii. Left arm of quarii. Pegasi. 
Waterbearer. 


24. a, 8 Pegasi. W. 
side of Square 
in Pegasus. 

25. y Pegasi, a An- 
dromedz. East 
side of Square 


in Pegasus. 
26. Piscis Bor. and|26. ¢, etc. etc. Pis-|26. 8, ete. ete. An-|26. ¢, ete. ete. An- 
dromeda ? 


27. 8, y Arietis.Left 
horn of Ram. 
28. 35, 39, 41 Arie- 


left side of An- cium. dromedze. dromede. 
tis. Musca. | 
{ 


It will be observed that only one member of the series, 
the fourth, requires to be marked as altogether question- 
able, although at another, the twenty-sixth, a mark of 
doubt has also had to be added. ‘The variations of the 
Arab mandzil are least numerous, and most easily ac- 
counted for, as attempted improvements, inspired by the 
original governing idea, the selection of available groups 
nearly bordering upon the ecliptic. On the other hand, 
the Hindu alterations, at numbers thirteen and twenty to 
twenty-two, are marked violations of the proper design 
and spirit of the system. 

It is not alone in India, Arabia, and China that traces 
of the lunar zodiac have been found. In the Bundehesh, 


/ 


THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 359 


a work belonging to the later Zoroastrian religion,! in the 
second chapter, where the creation of lights is treated of, 
we have given us first an enumeration of the twelve signs 
of the zodiac, with their familiar names, and then a like 
list of the twenty-eight equal parts (lunar stations) into 
which these are divided: their designations are in part 
corrupt and almost altogether obscure, so that no valu- 
able information can be drawn from them. Considering, 
however, the modern date of the work (it is believed to be 
not older than the eighth or ninth century of our era), we 
are not authorized to infer that the institution was known 
to the ancient Persians — especially as their earlier script- 
ures contain no allusions to it: it may be a late intro- 
duction, from either Arabia or India. Again, Kircher 
gives” the Coptic names of a like series of asterisms as 
found in Egypt, on a monument of late Roman age; but 
in the present condition of our knowledge we can make 
no use of this item for the general history of the insti- 
tution. Once more, allusions to a like system of division 
of the heavens have been suspected in the words mazza- 
loth and mazzaroth of our Hebrew Bible: words appa- 
rently kindred in origin to the Arabic manzil, though 
translated ‘ planets’ (the margin adds “or twelve signs, 
or constellations”) at 2 Kings xxiii. 5, and treated as a 
proper name (margin, “or the twelve signs”) at Job 
xxxvill. 82; but here, also, the mention is too uncertain, 
and of too indefinite character, to be made account of in 
any construction of the history of the lunar zodiac. 

In India, the lunar asterisms begin to appear as a sys- 
tem at the end of the Vedic hymn-period: a period, 
however, of which the chronological date is altogether 
uncertain.2 In the Rig-Veda there is but a single 
mention, of two of them, and that in the tenth book, 


1 See the first volume of these Studies, p. 173. 

2 See Weber's first essay on the Nakshatras, in the Trans. Berlin Acad. for 
1860, p. 330, and Seyffarth in Proc. Am. Or. Soc. for 1871, p. vii. 

8 See the previous volume, pp. 21, 73-79. 


360 3 THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 


which is in general of later origin than the rest. In the 
hymns of the Atharvan they appear more frequently, and 
in its nineteenth book (also an appendix to the original 
collection 7) is once given the whole list, with prayer or 
praise to each. Similar lists are more than once pre- 
sented in the prose parts (brdhmana passages, or Brah- 
manas) of the different divisions of the Yajur-Veda, and 
in the whole literature of the Brahmana and Siitra pe- 
riods ;? and at the time of the great grammarian Panini 
the nakshatras are a familiar institution, and the subject of 
frequent reference ; especially, as having furnished a no- 
menclature for the months, and therefore requiring to be 
mentioned whenever the date of a religious ceremony is 
prescribed.* 

Upon this point, of the asterismal derivation of the 
month-names, we must dwell a little, because of its gen- 
eral interest and importance, and the erroneous views 
which have been held in connection with it. Through 
all the known periods of Indian history, down even to 
the present, the current appellations of the lunar periods 
into which the year is divided have been asterismal, and 
taken in each case from the nakshatra in (or near) which 
the moon, during that particular synodical revolution, 
reached her full. Thus, the revolution in which the 
moon was full in either Ashadha — that is to say, in the 
Sagittary, the sun being in Gemini — was called Ash&dha; 
that in which she was full in Virgo (near Citra, or Spica 
Virginis), the sun being in Pisces, was called Caitra: and 
so of the rest. The significance and appropriateness of 
such a nomenclature are obvious. ‘There is, however, a 
practical difficulty in the matter. Owing to the incom- 
mensurabilities, already referred to, between the periods 
of revolution of sun, moon, and earth — to the fact that 
the number of asterisms is no multiple of that of months 


1 See the previous volume, p. 12. 2 Ibid. p. 19. 8 Ibid. pp. 66-72. 
4 For the details, see Weber’s second essay on the Nakshatras, in the Trans. 
Berlin Acad. for 1861. . 


THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 361 


in the year, and also that there is a remnant of about a 
third of a synodical: revolution required to make a year, 
over and above twelve — the moon cannot possibly be full 
in the same series of asterisms two years in succession. 
In fact, it is on the average only about twice a year that 
she is full in any asterism in which she was so the preced- 
ing year. If we take a series of years and calculate the 
sidereal place of every full moon in them, we shall find that 
it occurs with nearly equal frequency in every one of the 
asterisms. I made such a calculation some years ago, and 
ascertained that, in the eleven years between the end of 
1853 and the beginning of 1865 (reckoning the asteris- 
mal portions, according to the later Hindu method, to be 
explained farther on, as equal twenty-seventh parts of 
the ecliptic), the moon was full five times in each of four- 
teen asterisms, four times in each of six, and six times in 
each of seven.! If, then, the rule for naming the month 
from the full-moon asterism were strictly applied, the no- 
menclature would be in a constant state of flux, only two 
or three months retaining the same appellation for two 
years together. ‘To avoid tis troublesome confusion, the 
Hindus had to make a selection; and this they appear to 
have done at the very outset: even in the earliest of the 
Braéhmanas, the month date is always given by the same 
asterism as at present. The asterisms chosen as the basis 
of the nomenclature are (according to the numbers as- 
signed to them above) the first, third, sixth, eighth, tenth 
(or ninth), twelfth, fourteenth, sixteenth, eighteenth (or 
nineteenth), twenty-first, twenty-fourth (or twenty-fifth), 
and twenty-seventh ; and the names of the months de- 
rived from them (commencing with the one that begins 
in our January) are as follows: Magha, Phalguna, Cai- 
tra, Vaicdkha, JyAishtha, Ashddha, Qravana, BhAdra- 


1 See Journ. Am. Or. Society, viii. (1864), 69, 70. Inthe whole period there 
were twenty-three cases of full moon occurring in the same asterism in two suc- 
cessive years; in three successive years, not a single case. 


862 : THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 


pada (earlier Praushthapada), Acvina (earlier Acvayuj a), 
Karttika, Margacirsha, and Pausha (or Taisha). 

The question now arises, how and why this particular 
series was selected. 

The hope has been ardently cherished, by some scholars 
of great eminence, that the nomenclature might be able 
to furnish to the astronomical calculator the date of its 
fixation, the time being rigidly determined at which it 
would have been applicable to the series of months in a 
year, or in a number of successive or frequently recur- 
ring years. Sir William Jones hints at this, when he 
states (‘* As. Researches,” ii. 296) it to be an assertion of 
the Hindus ‘that, when their lunar year was arranged 
by former astronomers, the moon was at the full in each 
month on the very day when it entered the nakshatra 
from which that month is denominated.” As the moon 
spends only a day in each asterism, there is no signifi- 
cance in the special form of statement here adopted; it 
means simply that the. moon’s full took place in the 
denominating nakshatra itself, not in the latter’s neigh- 
borhood merely. The noted Bentley, most reckless and 
untrustworthy of all writers on Hindu astronomy, by 
introducing into the premises of the inquiry one of 
his characteristic and groundless assumptions —namely, 
that “the month Cravana always began at the summer 
solstice ” — contrives to infer that the names must have 
been fixed at any rate not earlier than 1181 B.c.1 And 
even Weber, as late as 1865,? cannot bear to give up the 
expectation of finding here, what is so rare and so pre- 
cious in Hindu history, a determinate date. 

But the difficulties in the way of deriving such a date 
are obvious and insuperable. In the first place, an ascer- 
tainment by a rigid astronomical calculation would imply 
that the ancient Hindus of the Vedic and Brahmaniec 


1 See Journ. Am. Or. Soc. viii. 85. 
2 See his Ind. Studien, ix. 455, 456. 


THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 363 


periods were skilled astronomers, furnished with instru- 
ments of precision, so that they were able to determine 
with absolute correctness the moment of full moon, and 
the limits of the various parts of the moon’s path be- 
longing to the several asterisms. But such an assump- 
tion would be without any foundation. We shall see 
presently that even the later Hindus, after they had 
learned scientific astronomy from the Greeks, could not 
determine the places cf a series of stars about the heavens 
without committing errors of mutual distance rising to 
five degrees; and all probabilities lead us to the view 
that, when first devised or introduced, the system of 
asterisms was nothing more than a means of rudely 
marking to the unassisted eye the regions of the heav- 
ens, and of allowing the revolution of the moon or any 
other planet to be approximately followed and described. 
The Hindus of that period might have regarded the 
moon as within the limits of a certain asterism when she 
was in fact some distance outside of them, according to 
any theoretical system of division of the ecliptic ; they 
might have regarded her as at her full when she was 
really some hours distant from it. In the period for 
which, as above stated, I calculated all the asterismal 
places of full moon, there were two years which might 
well enough have suggested the very series of names 
adopted by the Hindus, the moon coming into opposition 
within the denominating asterism in all but one or two 
cases, and in those cases so near to its borders that ob- 
servers by the eye alone might well enough have over- 
looked the discrepancy. And then, in the second place, 
when the year that precisely suited the nomenclature 
should be by any means found, the Metonic cycle of nine- 
teen years, which brings around a closely approximate 
rectification of the discrepancies of solar and lunar mo- 
tion, would cause its recurrence at stated intervals for a 
considerable period. 


364 | THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 


There is, so far as I can see, but one way, and that a 
very easy one, of solving all these difficulties: by sup- 
posing, namely, that the Hindus had a calendar, reckon- 
ing by lunar periods and governing by them the order of 
their religious ceremonies, either before their acceptance 
of the system of lunar asterisms or before they thought 
of making it the basis of a nomenclature for the months ; 
and that, when this nomenclature suggested itself to them, 
- involving the selection of certain denominating asterisms, 
they simply made the selection, as a practical necessity, 
and without any scrupulousness as to its precise adapta- 
tion to the conditions of a given year — a scrupulousness 
which would have been nothing less than overstrained, 
considering that it could never have precise adaptation to 
any two years in succession. The series adopted was no 
better, and no worse, than any other that might have 
been pitched upon ; and we may be content to approve 
the practical good sense which pitched upon it and ad- 
hered to it, nor strive to find beneath it a profound scien- 
tific reason which never can have been there to discover. 

There are traces of other systems of month-names to 
be found in the Hindu writings of various periods ;! but 
they are not known to have been ever practically used ; 
and Weber regards it as questionable whether they are 
not of merely artificial origin. 

Turning, now, from this department of the history of - 
the lunar zodiac in India, we find: the nakshatras again 
making an appearance, and in a manner from which very 
important conclusions have been drawn, in the Jyotisha. 
The Jyotisha is a brief astronomical treatise, of unknown 
date and in great part of difficult and problematical con- 
tent, generally regarded as attaching itself to the canoni- 
cal literature of the Rig and Yajur Vedas, and as helping 
to determine the times of sacrifice. Its main point is the 

1 See Weber’s second essay on the nakshatras, p. 349 seq. 


2 It has been published by Weber, in the 7’rans. Berlin Acad. for 1862, along 
with its commentary, and with a translation and notes. 


THE LUNAR ZODIAC. ; 365 


establishment of a yuga or lustrum, a cycle of five years, 
in order to the due reconciliation of solar and lunar reck- 
oning: a result, however, which its methods are wholly 
incompetent to attain. But its most pregnant historical 
datum is involved in its assertion that the cycle begins 
with the month Magha, at the time when the sun and 
moon commence their revolution together in the asterism 
Crayishtha (the twenty-second of the series, as given 
above); and that their movement northward in the 
heavens (from the winter solstice) is from the beginning 
of the same asterism, while the southern movement of 
the sun (from the summer solstice) takes place from the 
middle of AcleshA (seventh asterism) — that is to say, 
that the solstitial colure cut the ecliptic at that period at 
the beginning of Cravishtha and the middle of Acglesha. 
If, then, it be possible to determine precisely where in 
the sky these two points are, nothing can be easier than 
to calculate the time of the observation, since we know 
that the colure moves eastward about one degree in every 
seventy-two years. But before we can approach the ques- 
tion of position, we need to examine a little the later his- 
tory of Hindu astronomy. 

As a scientific system, dealing with exact data by exact 
methods, the Hindu astronomy is represented to us by a 
body of works called Siddhantas. A considerable num- 
ber of these are asserted to have been formerly in exist- 
ence, but hardly more than half a dozen are now obtain- 
able. For some of them is claimed a divine origin and 
immemorial antiquity ; others are ascribed to ancient and 
half-mythical authors ; yet others, to men whose individ- 
uality is undoubted and whose period is well known. 
The latest author of this third class is Bhaskara, who com- 
posed his Siddhanta-Ciromani in the twelfth century ; his 
most noted predecessors are Brahmagupta, of the seventh 
century, Varaha-Mihira, of the sixth, and Aryabhata, of 
the fifth and sixth. A principal representative of the 


366 | THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 


first class is the Sfirya-Siddhanta, ‘SiddhAnta of the 
Sun,’ professing to have been revealed by the Sun him- 
self to a semi-divine being, who then communicated it 
to men. It is the only work of the whole Siddhanta 
literature which has yet been completely published, trans- 
lated, and commented.! 

So far as has yet come to light (and there is no reason 
to suppose that further investigation will alter the aspect 
of the case), the system i in all the Siddhantas is, notwith- 
standing differences of detail, essentially one and the 
same. They establish as its basis an immense structure 
of chronological periods — namely, the Aon (kalpa), of 
4,320,000,000 years, and the Great Age (mahdyuga), of 
4,320,000, with its subdivisions, of which the current one, 
the Iron Age (kaliyuga), or last section of the present 
Great’ Age,?.is reckoned to have begun February 18th, 
2102 B. c., at midnight or at sunrise on the meridian of 
OUjjayini (or Ojein). And they teach that all the planets, 
and all their apsides and nodes, entered upon their mo- 
tion of revolution together, at the commencement of the 
ZEon, from a common starting-point, the beginning of 
the asterism Acvini (at or close upon the faint star ¢ 


1 The text edition is by Professor F. E. Hall, in the series of the Bibliotheca 
Indica, at Calcutta; the translation, ete., by myself, in the Journ. Am. Or. Soe. 
vol. vi. (1860). [tis proper, namely, that I here acknowledge, as properly be- 
longing to myself, the entire responsibility for that publication, in all its parts 
(except the concluding note by Mr. Burgess}. Important aid was rendered me 
at one and another point by Professor Hadley; and also especially (as acknowl- 
edged in the preface and elsewhere), by Professor Newton, who was my con- 
stant adviser and frequent collaborator, and to whose mathematical and astro- 
nomical knowledge is due a very large share of whatever merit may belong to 
the work. A bare version of the text of the Sfirya-Siddhanta was also given 
in the Bebl. Indica (1866), by a Hindu scholar, Bapii Deva, who likewise edited 
in the same volume of the series Wilkinson’s translation of a part of the Sid- 
dhanta-Ciromani. The text of this last mentioned comparatively recent and 
very comprehensive treatise (it includes also arithmetic and algebra) has been 
more than once printed in India, and its mathematical section, the Lilavati, 
was worked up by Colebrooke in 1817. 

% The current Great Age began after 1,969,056,000 years of the current Aon 
had elapsed. The three preceding sections of this Great Age contained 3,888,- 
GOD years. See, for details, the notes to the first chapter of the Siérya-Siddhdnta. 


THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 367 


Piscium), and that they all revolve a given number of 
times in the Aon, so that at its close they will again come 
to a universal conjunction at the same point in the heav- 
ens. Further, the numbers are so arranged that there 
is brought about a conjunction of the planets here (ac- 
cording to two or three authorities, indeed, only an ex- 
tremely near approach to it) at the beginning of the 
present Iron Age, or 3102 B.c. The fair inference seems 
to be that this last date is the real epoch of the whole 
system, a point of time at which the Hindu astronomers 
supposed or assumed the planets to have been in conjunc- 
tion at the initial point of their zodiacal reckoning ; and 
that they constructed their statements with reference to 
such an assumption.? How artificial and unscientific this 
framework of periods and recurring conjunctions is, does 
not require to be pointed out; but its character will be 
more distinetly-brought to light by a brief consideration 
of the revolutions of planetary apsides and nodes. As 
these elements of the moon’s orbit do actually revolve, 
and with conspicuous rapidity, it seems to have been 
thought necessary, for the sake of uniformity, that those 
of the other heavenly bodies should be made to do the 
same. Accordingly, each has its defined number of cir- 
cuits in the Aton ; but a number so small that it takes 
millions of years to accomplish any circuit, and the re- 
sulting movement is almost infinitesimal ; many thousand 
years would be required in order to bring about a change 
of position of the least practical value. And, what is 
the most telling circumstance about it all, the different 
text-books, while they vary considerably in the number 
of revolutions which they prescribe during the on, yet 


1 According to the data of a part of the authorities, including the Sarya- 
Siddhanta, a general conjunction of the planets at this point recurs at the end 
of every 1,080,000 years. 

2 In fact (see note to Sdrya-Siddhanta, i. 34), the moon was at the time only 
14 degree from the assumed point; the sun, less than 8 degrees; the other 
planets, from 85 degrees to 41 degrees. 


368 | THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 


manage all of them to leave the same odd remainder of a 
revolution, which determines the present position. Thus, 
for example, the revolutions of Jupiter’s apsides since the 
beginning of the present A‘on have been, according to 
four different treatises, 407, 390, 878, and 448, respec- 
tively: but the remaining fragment varies in them all 
only between the limits one hundred and seventy-one de- 
grees and one hundred and seventy-two and three-fourths 
degrees; and it gives a position swerving less than three 
degrees from the true one.} 

Having these data, and having them with a very near 
approach to truth,? the Hindu astronomer is able to deter- 
mine with tolerable accuracy the place of a given planet 
at a given time, and to predict and calculate eclipses.® 

Their calculations are made by the aid of a system of 
epicycles, essentially identical with the well-known Greek 
system of Ptolemy. And in solving the problems of trig- 
onometry, they use a table of sines, of values very fairly 
correct; the implied relation of diameter to circumfer- 
ence is 1: 3.14136. Their arithmetical methods are ex- 
tremely simple ; the simple proportion (‘rule of three”), 
and the equivalence of the square of the hypothenuse to 
the sum of the squares of the two legs in a right-angled 
triangle, answering almost every purpose. 

We may now inquire, of what age is this system, and 
of what origin? As bearing upon the first matter, its age, 
the most telling single fact is its recognition of ¢ Piscium 

1 See Strya-Siddhanta, note to i. 44. 

2 See Surya-Siddhanta, note to i. 84. The Hindu year is too long by 
nearly three minutes and a half; but the moon’s revolution is right within a 
second; those of Mercury, Venus, and Mars, within a few minutes; that of Ju- 
piter, within six or seven hours; that of Saturn, within six days and a half. 

3 See the calculation of two eclipses in the additional notes to the Sérya- 
Siddhanta. The lunar eclipse of February 6, 1860, their rules determine within 
half an hour of the true time; but they unluckily make it total instead of par- 
tial, and of duration too long by three quarters of an hour. For the solar 
eclipse of May 26, 1854, my calculation finds their elements a little more out 


of the way; but the value of the result was vitiated by my leaving uncorrected 
some of the errors of Mr. Burgess’s Hindu assistant. 


THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 369 


as the vernal equinox, the initial point of the sphere, the 
point from which all the motions of the heavenly bodies 
began, and from which all calculations of their position are 
to proceed. We can see no reason for attributing such 
importance to this star except its actual coincidence with, 
or its near proximity to, the equinox at the time when the 
system was constructed. And it had that position in the 
‘sixth century of our era (its year of no longitude is A. D. 
572). We know that no star can retain continuously the 
place of initial point of the sphere, owing to the move- 
ment of precession ; but it appears likely that the ele 
ment of the precession was overlooked or ignored by the 
first Hindu astronomers ; ! and when they came to work it 
into their system, they described it as a libratory move- 
ment, a swinging backward and forward through an are 
of 54°, or to a distance of 27° ineach direction from the 
permanent initial point; thus assuring to the latter its 
importance undiminished.” 

While this fact might have but an inferior value if di- 
rectly opposed by other evidences, or if the general proba- 
bilities were strongly against it, it is of a decisive impor- 
tance when supported by both —as is in fact the case. 
The oldest genuine names in the Hindu astronomical lit- 
erature, as we have seen above, are of that period; and 
there is nothing whatever in the more ancient literature of 
the Hindus, or in their character and the work done by 
them in other departments, which should lead us to sup- 
pose them to have been earlier in possession of a science 
like this — a science of acute and long-continued observa- 
tion and of skilled and trained deduction — or to have had 


1 [ have shown, I think, pretty clearly, in the note to Stirya-Siddhanta, iii. 12, 
that this treatise originally made no account of the precession; the single pas- 
sage in which it is, most blindly and awkwardly, defined and directed to be ‘‘ ap- 
plied wherever needed,’’ being an after-thought and an interpolation. 

2 The period of a complete libration, through 108°, is 7,200 years, according to 
the Sairya-Siddhanta, and the yearly motion 54/.. The true rate at present is 
about 50}”. . 

24 


BTO >. THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 


at any period the ability to give birth toit. The clear. 
light of modern investigation has forever dispelled the 
wild dreams of men like Bailly, who could believe India 
to have been the primitive home of human knowledge and 
culture. It has been declared by Weber, the most compe- 
tent of Indian scholars to pronounce upon such a point, 
and without contradiction from any quarter, that no men- 
tion even of the lesser planets is to be found in Hindu 
literature until the modern epoch, after the influence of 
foreign astronomical science began to be felt. - If, then, we 
find such a science making its sudden appearance in India 
at so late a period, we cannot help turning our eyes abroad 
to see whence it should have come. Nor can we long 
remain doubtful as to where it originated. 

The suggestion that the Hindus might probably have 
borrowed the foundations of their astronomy from the 
Greeks was first distinctly made by the illustrious Cole- 
brooke ; and the evidence confirmatory of his view has, 
gone on accumulating, until its truth may now be regarded 
as fully established, no person of sufficient information 
and competent judgment being found any longer to ques- 
tion it. I will refer here to only an item or two.! 

There are not only western ideas, but Greek words, in 
the very centre and. citadel of the Hindu science. The 
Hindu circle is divided like our own: only the names of 
the signs, meaning ‘ Ram,’ ‘ Bull,’ ‘ Twins,’ and so on, 
are applied, not generally to the regions in the sky 
marked by the constellations so designated, but to the 
first, second, third, ete., arcs of 80° each, counting from 
any given point. And the second of are, the quantity 
most often and familiarly used, is called by a Greek name, 
liptéd (from Aerrdv). Again, the planets are regularly 
mentioned and referred to in the Siddhantas in the order 
in which they succeed one another as regents of the days 


1 The case is summed up more fully in the last additional note to the —* 
Siddhanta. 


THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 871 


(Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn: the 
same order which gave their Latin names, and secondarily: 
our own, to the days of the week) ; but the regent of the 
day is determined by the regent of its first twenty-fourth 
part or hour; and the hour is no ancient or current divis- 
ion of the day in India; it appears only in connection 
with this particular astrological institution ; and it, like- 
_ wise, has a Greek name, hord (1. e. épa).t Once more, 
the name for a planet’s mean anomaly —that is to say, 
the place of the eentre of its epicycle — on which depends 
the whole process of determination of its position, is 
known as its kendra ; and this, too, is no Sanskrit word, 
but simply a transfer of the Greek xévrpov. Add to these 
eyidences the frequent notices found in early Hindu 
commentaries upon astronomical works of valuable knowl- 
edge derived from the Yavanas (‘ Ionians,’ or Greeks, 
or westerners in general), the traces of western names 
among the titles of the Siddhintas themselves (as the 
Pauliga-Siddhanta, directly ascribed by an Arab author 
to ** Paulus the Greek;” and the Romaka-Siddhanta), 
and their mention of Romaka-city — 7. e. Rome —as the 
metropolis of the west (even the Stirya-Siddhanta is said. 
in some ‘manuscripts of its text to have been revealed 
there), and, in the absence of rebutting testimony, the 
question of origin must be looked upon as settled beyond 
controversy. 

The communication of Greek astronomy to India 
probably took place in connection with the lively com- 
mercial intercourse carried on during the first centuries 
of our era between Alexandria, as the port and mart of 
Rome, and the western coast of India: whether through 
the medium of Hindus who visited the Mediterranean, or 
of learned Greeks who made the yoyage to India, or by 
the translation of Greek treatises, or in what other way, 


1 See note to Sdrya-Siddhdnta, i. 52, where it is shown how the Hindus have 
no week, although they name the days precisely as we do. 


372 | THE LUNAR ZODIAG. 


it were useless to conjecture. Its gradual working over 
into the form characteristic of the Hindu system may 
have been the work of generations; and of the shapes 
which it wore prior to its complete development (which 
must have been as early as the fifth or sixth century) we 
have no sufficient record left us. 

After this long but necessary digression, we are ready 
to return to the subject of the lunar zodiac, in order to 
see in what shape it presents itself in the modern astro- 
nomical system. I follow here the teachings of the 
Stirya-Siddhanta, with which those of the other astro- 
nomical text-books are believed to accord in all essential 
respects. 

In the Siddhanta, all signs of any special connection 
between the moon and the nakshatras have entirely dis- 
appeared. The moon is now only one of a class, the 
planets, and from the astronomical point of view they 
are all to be treated alike. After the rules for finding 
the true longitude of a planet have been given, we are 
told that the “portion”? (6hoga) of an asterism is 800! 
of arc (18° 20’); and that, in order to find in what 
asterism any given planet is, the longitude of the latter, 
reduced to minutes, must be divided by 800; which will 
determine the asterism, and the point*in it, occupied by 
the planet ; and that hence, by means of the ascertained 
rate of daily motion of the planet, may be calculated the 
time it has spent, and has yet to spend, in the asterism. 
This obviously implies a division of the ecliptic into 
twenty-seven equal parts (860° + 27 = 133°), each of 
which has the name of an asterism, and is regarded as 
the share of the planetary path belonging to that aster- 
ism. ‘This is the only rule given us for ascertaining the 
presence of a planet in an asterism: if we wish to know 
when the sun and moon are together in Cravishtha, or 
the sun in the middle of Aclesha, or the moon in Rohini, 
this is the method which we must follow. So far, then, 


THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 573 


we have only a transfer to the closet, and a deduction by 
arithmetical methods from exact data, of a process and 
result which in the olden time were matters of direct ob- 
servation in the heavens. But in a later part of the. 
treatise the planets and nakshatras are brought into rela- 
tion with one another in a different and additional way. 
The seventh chapter takes up the subject of planetary 
conjunctions. Two planets, as we see from the rules laid 
down, are said to be in conjunction (yoga) with one 
another at the instant when they are upon the same sec- _ 
ondary to the prime vertical, or upon the same great 
circle passing through the north and south points of the 
horizon. As data for the calculation are to be found the 
longitude and latitude of the two planets; and the proc- . 
ess is an intricate, awkward, and inaccurate one. Its 
object is purely astrological ; the conjunction receives its 
name and value from the degree of approach of the two 
heavenly bodies, their relative position, and their com- 
parative brilliancy. In the succeeding chapter, then, en- 
titled ‘‘ chapter of the conjunction of asterisms and plan- 
ets,’ the Siddhanta goes on to teach us how to determine 
the instant of a like momentary conjunction, on a second- 
ary to the prime vertical, of a given planet with the as- 
terisms. The rules being already known, it was only 
necessary to give further a definition of the positions of 
the asterisms. This is done in a peculiar manner: the 
star intended is referred to the ecliptic by an hour-circle, 
and its distance from the ecliptic upon that circle, and of 
that circle upon the ecliptic from the initial point of the 
sphere, are noted and defined. The former is called the 
vikshepa (‘removal’: 7. e. from the ecliptic) of the as- 
terism ; the term is the same one that is employed for 
the latitude of a planet: the latter is called its dhruva, 
‘fixed, unchanging, immovable (place) ’— that is to say, 
while the planets are ever changing position, and their 
longitude has to be calculated for any given moment, the 


374. ; THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 


longitude of the asterism is fixed; its place can be laid 
down once for all.! The same data are later directed to 
be employed in fixing the times of heliacal setting and 
rising of the asterisms; other than these, no uses of 
them are anywhere hinted at. 

But the asterisms are well known to be in most cases 
constellations or groups, and not single stars ; how then 
does their position admit of being defined in the manner 
here described? A passage in the latter part of the 
same chapter clears up this difficulty, by informing us to 
which star in each group the exact definition of position 
applies: which is its yoga-térd, ‘ junction-star,’ or star 
selected to represent it in the calculation of a conjunction 
(yoga). And the positions of half a dozen other prom- 
inent single stars are defined in the same manner, and 
for a similar purpose. 

This is the whole story of the nakshatras, as read in 
the Stirya-Siddhanta. And the value and relation of its 
different parts seem obvious enough. We have the lunar 
zodiac retained to answer its old purpose, the definition 
of planetary places in the ecliptic, with all that follows 
therefrom ; only that the revolution effected in the char- 
acter of astronomical science makes those places now 
ascertainable by calculation, instead of by observation. 
But we have a new use and application added, of a purely 
astrological nature. If the mutual aspects of the planets, 
as they pass nearest to one another in the sky, are of 
importance enough to be calculated and defined, then 
also, naturally enough, the like aspects of the planets and 
of those groups of stars which have from time immemorial 
been the object of careful observation and of especial 
reverence. It was of consequence to know not only, for 
example, when the moon was within the are of 134° 
named Citra, but also when she was closest to the star 


1 The fact that, in thus ‘ fixing’ the place of the asterism, the precession, 
which is all the time changing both its longitude and its latitude, is left out of 
account, is one of the important supporting circumstances to the view laid down 
above, that the Hindu system at,the outset ignored the precession. 


THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 375 


(Spica Virginis) that gave the name. And the observa- 
tion and record of the “ fixed ”’ place of the star gave the 
means of making this determination (so it. was imagined) 
for all time. Hence the series of measurements laid 
down in the Siddhantas. The process involved the 
choice out of each group of a single star, usually the 
brightest of the group, as its representative ; and the 
name given to the one selected, ‘‘ junction-star (yoga- 
tdérd@) of the asterism,” is clear evidence both of the selec- 
tion and of its purpose. How unconscious the Siddhanta 
is of any clashing between the two uses is shown by the 
fact that it describes the one upon the basis of the other. 
It defines, namely (by the odd but characteristic device 
of giving a number which when multiplied by ten will 
furnish the distance in minutes from the initial point of 
the portion), the place of the junction-star in the aster- 
ismal portion bearing the same name. But in a little 
series of three or four asterisms toward the end of the 
system there is a practical difficulty: the groups formerly 
selected by the eye to mark the successive divisions turn 
out, when measured by accurate astronomical methods, to 
have such a position that their principal stars fall outside 
the divisions bearing their names respectively. This is 
passed over, however, as of no real consequence ; the text 
reads (with our explanatory insertions in brackets) : “the 
junction-star of] latter Ashadha goes at the middle of 
the portion of former Ashadha ; [that of] Abhijit also is 
at the end of [the portion of] former Ashadha ; the place 
of [the junction-star of] Gravana is at the end of [the 
portion of] latter Ashadha ; [the junction-star of] Qrav- 
ishtha, again, is where the third and fourth quarters of 
[the portion of] Gravana meet.” 

This passage likewise shows clearly which of the twenty- 
eight asterisms, in the division of the ecliptic into twen- 
ty-seven portions, is left without a portion. It is Abhijit, 
or a, «, and ¢ Lyre, the most distant northern member 
of the system. Something like this has been its treat- 


376 | THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 


ment from the very beginning of ‘the history of the 
system in India; in the very oldest lists it is now found 
inserted, and now omitted. The point is one to which 
we shall have occasion to return hereafter. 

The peculiar way in which the positions of the junc- 
tion-stars are defined seems almost necessarily to imply 
an observation of the intervals of their meridian transits, 
with determination of their declination, which latter was 
then reduced to wkshepa, or distance from the ecliptic, 
by calculating the declination of the ecliptic at the point 
in question, and combining the two by addition or sub- 
traction. We may not speak as with certainty respect- 
ing this, because we know very little of the ancient 
Hindu methods of observation. ‘The Siddhantas are lib- 
eral enough in giving rules for calculating, but very much 
the reverse as to rules for observing. ‘Their science is 
not a science of observation ; it is a system whose data 
are absolute and perfect, handed down from inspired 
sages, or revealed by divine beings; the student is to 
take it, and deduce everything from it in his closet; to 
send him to the heavens to collect facts for new deduc- 
tions would be to imply a doubt as to the authority of his 
teachers. So far as is known, the astronomical literature 
contains no record of any native Hindu observations, 
with the exception of these defined positions of the junc- 
tion-stars of the asterisms, along with those of the half- 
dozen other stars already referred to. A peculiar inter- 
est, therefore, belongs to these, as the only accessible tests 
of the capacity of the Hindus as observers. Moreover, 
there should be derivable from them some conclusion as 
to the time when they were made. I give, therefore, the 
following table,! in which the longitudes and latitudes of 
the junction-stars, as calculated from the Hindu data by 
the rules of our spherical trigonometry, are presented, 
and compared with the true longitudes and latitudes, as 


1 Taken without alteration from the notes to the eighth chapter of the Sirya- 
Siddhinta. : 


THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 377 


determined by modern science.! The reference is to the 
equinox of A. D. 560, because that is, according to the 
Stirya-Siddhanta, the initial point of the sphere. All 
authorities, namely, make this point coincide with the 
end of Revat? and the beginning of Agcvini; but while 
some declare the division-line to be precisely at the south- 
ernmost or junction-star of Revati—namely, ¢ Piscium 
—the Stirya-Siddhanta and at least one other fix it 10! 
east of that star. The resulting discordance of a dozen 
years is of no account whatever in judging a question as 
to observations so rude as we shall find these to be. 


Positions, and Errors of Position, of the Junction-Stars of the Asterisms.2 


LONGITUDE, A. D. 560. LATITUDE. 
Cy) Name. SF TA = Star compared. 
4 Hindu} ,,; Hindu 
a Hindu| True. Pe ag Hindu. |} True. Revie, 
arto. st Of,|.0 8 os os 

1| Krittik4, 89 8] 39 58\—0 50! 4 44.N.| 4 1N./+0 43!» Tauri, Alcyone. 

2| Rohini, 48 9} 49 45|—1 36] 4 49 S.| 5 30 S.|+0 41|o Tauri, Aldebaran. 

3 Mrigacirsha, 61 38} 63 40/—2 37| 9 49 * |13 25 *¢ |+8 36/A Orionis. 

4| Ardra, 65 50} 68 43;/—2 538} 8 58 ‘* /16 4 * 7 11\ Orionis. 

5) Punarvasu, 92 52; 93 14/—0 22| 6 ON.| 6 389 N.|—0 89/6 Gemin., Pollux. 

6| Pushya, 106 0/108 42|—2 42) 0 0 0 4% |—0O 4/6 Cancri. 

7| Aclesha, 109 59|112 20|—2 21) 6 56 S.|11 8 8.|+4 12)« Hydre. 

8|Magha, 129 0/129 49;—0 49} 0 0 °| 0 27 N./—0 27/a Leonis, Regulus. 
'.9|P.-Phalgunt, {189 58/141 15)—1 17|11 19 N./14 19 “ |—8 0/6 Leonis. 
10|U.-Phalgunt, {150 10/151 37|—1 27|12 5 ‘* |12 17 “ |—0 12/8 Leonis. 

11| Hasta, 174 22/173 27|+0 55/10 6 S.|12 10 S.|+2 4/6 Corvi. 

12| Citra, 180 48/183 49/3 1] 150 ‘| 2 2 |40 19/4 Virginis, Spica. 
13|Svati, 183 2|184 12/—1 10/33 50 N.|80 57 N.|+2 53/a@ Bootis, Arcturus. 
14| Vicakha, 213 31/211 0|+2 81] 125 S.| 148 8.|+0 23|c Libre. 

15| Anuradha, 224 44/222 34/+2 10) 2 52 ‘| 1 57 * |—0 55/6 Scorpionis. 

16) Jyeshtha, 230 7/229 44/-+0 23) 3 50 “| 4 81 ‘* |+0 41\a Scorp., Antares. 
17| Mla, 242 52/244 83)/—1 41) 8 48 ‘ 13 44 “* |+4 56|A Scorpionis. 

18| P.-Ashadha, 254 89) 254 32/+0 7) 5 28 ‘*| 6 26 +: |+0 57/6 Sagittarii. 
19/U.-Ashidha, 260 23 252 21/—1 58} 4 59 “| 3 24 * |—1 225i Sagittarii. 

20| Abhijit, 264 10/265 15|—1 5/59 58 N.|61 43 N.|—1 48|a Lyre, Vega. 

21| Cravana, 282 29/281 41/+0 48/29 54 ** /29 19 * |+0 85\a Aquilz, Atair. 
22 iravisntha, 296 5,296 19|—0 14/35 83 ‘* |81 57 “* |+8 36/6 Delphini. 

23} Catabhishaj, 819 50 821 33/—1 43] 0 28 S.| 023 S.|—0 5)A Aquarii. 

24| P.-Bhadrapad4,| 334 25 833 27|+-0 58/22 30 N./19 25 N./+8 5/a Pegasi. 
25|U.-BhAdrapada,}347 16 849 8/—1 52/24 1 ** |25 41 ‘* |—1 40/y Peg. & a Androm. 
26| Revati, 3859 50.359 50! O 0; 0 0 0 18 S./+0 18) ¢ Piscium. 

27| Acvini, 11 59 18 55|—1 57| 9 11N.| 8 28 N.|+0 43)8 Arietis. 

28| Bharani, 24 385 26 541—2 19}11 6‘ |11 17 * |\—O 11]85 Arietis, a Musce. 


1 They are taken, for convenience, from Flamsteed. In a comparison in 
which a high degree of accuracy was desired, and was not in the nature of the 
case unattainable, it would be necessary to take into account the proper mo- 
tions of the stars compared. This has not been done. But I may remark that 
the junction-star of the 13th asterism, Arcturus, has a much greater proper mo- 
tion than any other in the series ; and that, if this were allowed for, according 
to its value as determined by Main, the Hindu error of longitude would be di- 
minished about 22’, but the error of latitude increased about 35/. 

2 The identification of the junction-star is not in every case of equal certainty; 


378 . THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 


The different text-books are not precisely accordant in 
their definitions of the position of these stars. But their 
variations do not at all appear to be such as might be 
due to different sets of measurements, made at different 
times. By far the most important among them relates 
to the place of Citra (Spica), which, as the table shows, 
presents the extreme of error in one direction, being set 
full three degrees too far to the westward. Except the 
Sirya-Siddhanta and its echo, the Cakalya-Sanhita, the 
other treatises correct this error, by giving Citra 183° in- 
stead of 180° of longitude. It may be justifiable to con- 
jecture here that the Sfirya-Siddhanta and its supporters 
could not resist the temptation to regard the autumnal 
equinox as exactly, instead of only approximately, marked 
by this brilliant star, and so were led to alter the true 
figure. 

There is no apparent relation to be discovered among 
the errors of longitude in the table, such as should point 
us to any particular star as having been taken for the 
starting-point, the errors increasing as they depart from 
it in either direction. We have assumed the determina- 
tion of ¢ Piscium to be the correct one, and have ‘stated 
the errors as they appear with reference to that assump- 
tion, and to the date involved in it. But this is only a 
provisional proceeding ; in our present ignorance of the 
mode of operation of the observers, we should be equally 
justified in taking any other star for the starting-point, 
and making a new statement of the errors, with reference 
to it. And we should derive from each in succession a 
different date as that of the measurement, and a different 
position for the dividing lines of the asterismal portions. 
Thus, Citra (Spica) would yield A. p. 344 as the date 
when it was at the autumnal equinox, and would move 


for the details as to all I must again refer to the notes to the Sérya-Siddhanta. 
In a single case (25th asterism), the longitude of one star and the latitude of 
another is compared: see as above. In the column of Hindu error in latitude, 
north direction is regarded as positive, and south direction as negative. 


THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 379 


all the division lines 3° farther east; while Vig&kh4 (. 
Libre) would give A. p. 740 as the time when it had 
215° 31’ of longitude, and would shift the divisions 24° 
farther west, or 53° west of those derived from Citra. 
These are the two extremes, and they allow us a. range of 
four centuries for the time of measurement, and of 51° for 
the positions of dividing lines: the others would dot over 
the intervals pretty thickly: thus, Mrigactrsha would 
yield us 371, Rohint 445, Hasta 626 A. D., and so on. 
Still, the table shows a marked preponderance of minus 
errors, their sum being 83° 54’, while the sum of plus 
errors is only 7° 52’. On taking the difference of these 
sums, and dividing it by 28, we find the average error of 
longitude to be—56’, the greatest deviation from it in 
either direction being —2° 4! and +38° 27!. So far as the 
evidence, then, of a general average of the determinations 
goes, it would indicate that the Hindu measurements of 
position were made from a vernal equinox situated about 
1° to the eastward of that of A. D. 560, and therefore 
belonging nearly to the year 490. Yet it would be very 
ill-judged to lay any stress whatever upon this last date, 
or to speak otherwise than loosely of results where the 
data are so rude. The errors of latitude are too consid- 
erable and irregular, and belong to an element too slowly 
and slightly affected by the precession, to be worth aver- 
aging at all. We can only notice that the worst of them 
are committed in the measurement of southern latitudes 
of some amount, and are in the same direction, giving the 
star a place too far northward. And our final conclusion 
must be that the observations for position of the junction- 
stars may have been made in any one of several centuries, 
from the fourth to the seventh, or during the whole of 
that period in which, as above stated, the Hindu astro- 
nomical system was taking shape. 
In the case of the seven other stars (Canopus, Sirius, 
Capella, 8 Tauri, 5 Aurige, and 6 and @ Virginis) of which 


380 3 THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 


the Siddhanta gives the position, the range of errors is 
even considerably greater ;! as if the work were done 
later, by a more unskillful hand. | 

We are now at last prepared to take up the question as 
to the date derivable for the period of the Jyotisha from 
the position of the solstitial colure as stated in that little 
work (above, p. 865). On the basis of an equal division 
of the ecliptic into twenty-seven asterismal portions of 
_ 134° each, which obviously underlies that statement, the 
solstitial colure cutting the ecliptic at the beginning of 
Cravishtha and middle of Aclesha, the equinoxes would 
evidently be, the vernal at the end of the third quarter 
of Bharani, the autumnal at the end of the first quarter 
of Vicakha. If, then, we make the assumption (the pro- 
priety of which will be discussed farther on) that the 
limits of the asterisms were the same in the earlier sys- 
tem as in the later, we shall see plainly enough that the 
equinoxes of the two systems are 1# asterismal portions, or 
234°, apart ; and hence, that their difference of epoch, at 
1° of precession to 72 years, is (72X23}) 1680 years ; 
and it would follow that the epoch of the Jyotisha is 
(1680 — 560) 1120 B. c. Or, if we take the average 
period as derived above from the errors of position of the 
junction-stars, we shall arrive at an earlier point in the 
same century (1680 — 490 — 1190 B. c.). Or, once more, 
if we assume each successive junction-star to be abso- 
lutely correct, and make the comparison and deduction of 
earlier epoch from that alone, we shall arrive at the same 
variety of results as for the later epoch, dotting here and 
there a period of four centuries, between 1336 and 940 B. c. 

All these methods, now, have been applied by different 
calculators, in their attempts to find a date for the Jyo- 
tisha. Sir William Jones took the general difference 
of 13 asterisms, and its resulting interval of 1680 years ; 
but he reckoned the interval backward from an assumed 


1See note to Stéirya-Siddhanta, viii. 21. 


THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 881 


period of the astronomer Varaha-Mihira, A. D. 499, and so 
arrived at (1680 — 499) 1181 B.c. Archdeacon Pratt, in 
1862 (‘‘ Journ. As. Soc. Bengal,” xxxi. 49 seg.), made 
instead a selection of the junction-star of the asterism 
Magha (a Leonis or Regulus), and arrived, curiously 
enough, though by a totally different process, at precisely 
the same date, 1181 B. c. This choice on the part of 
Mr. Pratt was, on the whole, a lucky hit, but I do not 
see that it was anything more. He does not at all ex- 
amine the set of positions of which this is one, determine 
their relative value, and pick out intelligently the one 
which will best serve his purpose. So far as is to be 
gathered from his statements, he is guided to his selection 
only by the facts that Regulus is a bright star and close to 
the ecliptic, and that it is in the next asterism to that in 
which was the defined position of the summer solstice. But 
if he had taken instead Citra (Spica), which is also a star 
of first magnitude, and on both ecliptic and equator, or the 
junction-stars of either the solstitial asterism itself or the 
one on the other side of it from Magha (namely, Pushya, 
§ Caneri), his calculation would have given him the four- 
teenth century instead of the twelfth B. c. It cannot be 
claimed, then, that Mr. Pratt’s process has any sufficient 
scientific basis ; even Sir W. Jones’s is to be preferred to 
it. Mr. Davis, however, one of the oldest and best of the 
students of Hindu astronomy, was much more unlucky in 
making a similar arbitrary selection. He took Citra 
(Spica Virginis), according to the definition of its posi- 
tion given in the Stirya-Siddhanta: and he arrived at 
1391 B. c. No star more ill-suited to his purpose could 
have been taken; since, as the table shows, Citra offers 
the extreme of divergence in one direction from the aver- 
age ; and, as I have pointed out above, its place is fixed 
by the majority of the Hindu text-books 3° farther west. 
And Colebrooke! followed the lead of Davis; his state- 


1 As has been shown by his son, Sir T. E. Colebrooke, Journ. Roy. As. Soc, 
i. (1865), 335 seg. 


382 3 THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 


ment! in his famous essay on the Vedas, after giving the 
datum from the Jyotisha, that ‘*such was the position of 
those cardinal points in the fourteenth century before the 
Christian era,’’ has no other basis. 

But there is another and still more fundamental error 
committed by all these calculators. They assume unques- 
tioningly two. things which are not only very question- 
able, but even, in my opinion, absolutely inadmissible : 
Ist, that the older Hindus of the period of the Jyotisha 
had a precise determination of the limits of their asteris- 
mal portions; and 2d, that these limits coincided with 
those of the later system. As to the first point, if the 
later generation, which had been trained in the exact 
processes of the Greek astronomy, could not make a better 
series of observations around the heavens than one which 
implied a fluctuation of full 5° in the position of the divid- 
ing lines of the ecliptic, it is not less than absurd to claim 
that they were more skillful fifteen centuries earlier. We 
have no good reason to suppose that in the Jyotisha time 
the groups were anything more than constellations deter- 
mining by their proximity, and to the eye alone, the suc- 
cessive divisions of the ecliptic. He who employed them 
knew well enough that the “beginning of Cravishtha ” 
and the “ middle of Aclesha.” were, by the theory of the 
method of division, opposite points in the sky; but he 
never would have thought of trying to find them by 
reckoning from a fixed initial-point and laying off equal 
twenty-sevenths of the ecliptic; and if he had tried, his 
success would have been of the most discouraging charac- 
ter. I do not myself believe that the statement made in 
the Jyotisha even implies its author to have held the 
equinoxes to be at the end of the third quarter of 
Bharani and the first of Vic&kha: if he had set out to 
define the place of the equinoxes instead of the solstices, 
he would not have presumed to talk in such exact terms 


1 As. Researches, viii. 473 ; Essays (1st ed.) i. 109, 110. 


THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 383 


as quarters of an asterism; he would have fixed one equi- 
nox at the beginning of an asterism and the other at the 
middle of its opposite — doubtless the beginning of Krit- 
tika and the middle of Anuradha, or in that very position 
which we most plausibly suppose to be intimated by the 
putting of Krittika at the head of the series during the 
period of its earliest use. 

Once more, even if we could imagine the old system to 
proceed by equal divisions of 133° from a definite start- 
ing-point, we have no reason to conclude that this start- 
ing-point would coincide with an (intended) division-line 
of the later system. It is one of the necessary difficul- 
ties connected with a series of determining constellations 
selected by the means and for the purpose of those form- 
ing the lunar zodiac, that they cannot be precisely evenly 
distributed, and that, when the test of more accurate ob- 
servation comes to be applied to them, they. are likely 
to exhibit their irregularity in an embarrassing manner. 
Fixing the initial-point where the later system fixes it, 
the groups take every variety of position in their respect- 
ive portions, several times at the very end or beginning, 
twice even falling within the limits of the wrong portion, 
while one portion (C(ravishtha) is left without any group 
in or very near it. As the system is actually used, this 
causes no practical difficulty ; but it does prevent us from 
recognizing any natural and presumable series of divis- 
ions. The star ¢€ Piscium had for the later system- 
makers a special value, for a specific reason —its pre- 
sumed coincidence with the vernal equinox ; but we have 
no sufficient ground for believing that it had always been 
recognized as marking the eastern limit of Revati; as be- 
ing, in fact, anything more than a member (even if it was 
one: for it is far remote from the Arab and Chinese 
asterisms, and may possibly have had its present office 
given it at the time when the initial point of the sphere 
was fixed by it) of the group that determined Revati. 


384. | THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 


But in estimating the value of such a datum, as fur- 
nished by the Jyotisha, we have finally to take into ac- 
count the difficulty of the observation it records. The 
place of the equinox is not to be. determined by going out 
and watching the heavens; it is a deduction from obser- 
vations, by combinations and inferences, which lie quite 
out of the power of men unskilled in astronomical science. 
That either the ancient or the modern Hindus have had 
the capacity to grasp clearly the conditions of the problem 
involved, and to solve it successfully, is, to say the least, 
not very probable. I should not expect from them a 
nearer approximation than within several degrees, on the 
one side or the other. 

Putting together, now, all these sources of error, we 
shall see clearly that no definite date is capable of being 
extracted from the statement of the Jyotisha. It is not 
easy to make a valuation in figures of elements so indefi- 
nite; but it is safe to say that a thousand years would 
not be too long a period to cover all the uncertainties 
involved. 

And when we come to add that the Jyotisha has no 
definable place in the Sanskrit literature, or relation to 
the Vedic ceremonial, that we can only pronounce it later 
than the Brahmanas and older than the Siddhdntas, we 
shall see that this famous datum, which has seemed to 
promise so much, has caused so much labor and discus- 
sion, and is even yet clung to by some scholars, as the 
sheet-anchor of ancient Hindu chronology, is nothing 
but a delusive phantom.? : 


1 For instance, by Lassen, even in the second edition of his /ndische Alter- 
thumskunde (i. 606, 607, 976). Lassen’s treatment, to be sure, of all astronom- 
ical points exhibits a deficiency of knowledge and of critical judgment. 

2 T have twice before discussed its value, coming to the same result: once in 
the Journ. Roy. As. Soc. (London, 1865), i. 816-331; and again in a note on 
Colebrooke’s essay on the Vedas, in the second edition of his collected works 
(i. 126-131). Considering the interest and importance of the subject, I’ have 
wished to include its discussion in the present volume; and I have preferred to 
work it into this general presentation of the history of the lunar zodiac, rather 
than reproduce either of those earlier articles. 


THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 385 


We turn now to consider the Chinese system of siew 
and its history. And here we cannot well help beginning 
with the opinions and arguments of M. J.-B. Biot, the 
eminent French savant, who died only twelve years ago 
(Feb. 1862), at the advanced age of eighty-seven years, 
and with whom the subject was to the very last one of 
the liveliest interest. As late as 1860, he furnished to 
the Journal des Savants a series of four articles on our 
translation of the Stirya-Siddhanta; and he followed it 
up the next year by another on the history of the Chinese 
astronomy, filling ninety quarto pages— both series being 
in great part occupied with discussing the’ szew and the 
nakshatras and their relations to one another.! If this 
author has described aright the Chinese system and its 
mode of origination, he has proved it a native Chinese 
institution ; and we have no choice but to regard all the 
other Asiatic forms of the lunar zodiac as derived from it. 

The principal points made by M. Biot are two: Ist, 
the stew are not constellations, groups of stars, but single 
stars, used, as in our modern astronomy, by way of stand- 
ards to which planets or other stars observed in their 
neighborhood may be referred ; and, so far as they divide 
the heavens into parts, those parts begin with the circle of 
declination of each determinant and continue until that of 
the next is reached ; 2d, they have nothing to do with the 
moon’s motion, nor with the ecliptic ; twenty-four of them 
were selected by the Chinese about 2357 B. C., upon two 
grounds: their proximity to the equator of the period, and 
the near correspondence of their circles of declination 
with those of the principal circumpolar stars; the other 
four were added about 1100 B. c., in order to mark the 
equinoxes and solstices of that period. Let us examine 
these two parts of Biot’s theory, in inverse order. 


1 They, along with an earlier series (of 1859), were collected in a volume en- 
titled Etudes sur I Astronomie Indienne et sur I’ Astronomie Chinoise, issued after 
the author’s death, with an unfinished introduction on the scientific value of the 
Egyptian astronomy. ee. 


386 | THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 


In the first place, we have to notice that every part of 
the account of origin as drawn out in detail by him is 
pure hypothesis on his part. It is not in the least founded 
on either record or tradition in the Chinese literature. 
We are asked to believe that Cheu-Kong added the last 
four members to the system (they occur in the seventh, 
fourteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-eighth groups, as 
these have been stated above), simply because they are 
found to agree in position with the cardinal points of 
the heavens at his time, and because they are not readily 
explained by the hypothesis which we are asked to adopt 
for the other twenty-four. But there is nothing con- 
vincing, nothing even plausible, in this. If the origin 
of the system is that which all who disagree with Biot 
claim it to be, the four groups in question are quite in 
place, and could not well have been passed over in select- 
ing the asterisms: so, especially, the fourteenth, 8 Libra, 
one of the most conspicuous pair bordering the ecliptic 
between Spica and Antares. And, in a series of groups 
intended to be equally distributed about the ecliptic and 
of a number divisible by four, that there should be sets 
of four groups so nearly 90° apart as to agree pretty 
nearly (namely, within 8°) at some epoch or other with 
the equinoxes and solstices of that epoch, is certainly 
nothing strange. 

Now as to the other twenty-four. Biot would have us 
believe that the Chinese of a still earlier period than 
2357 B. C. had been in the habit of particularly obsery- 
ing the circumpolar stars, of noting their transits across 
the meridian, and of comparing therewith the transits 
of other stars. In the gradual improvement of their 
processes, they hit upon the plan of taking their funda- 
mental stars nearer to the equator, for the sake of greater 
facility and accuracy of observation; but they were still 
so far under the dominion of their former method that 
they made choice of such new stars as were virtual repre- 


THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 387 


sentatives of the old ones, standing upon nearly the same 
eircles of declination. Here, we must again note, we 
have no native tradition to which modern calculations 
should form a welcome confirmatory addition, but a mere 
conjectural inference, drawn by M. Biot from facts which 
we have as good a right to interrogate and interpret as 
he. And to me, I must acknowledge, the facts do not ap- 
pear to urge, or even to suggest, such an inference. So, 
as regards the proximity of the determinants to the 
equator: one has only to look at the table of astronomi- 
cal coérdinates of the whole system for 2357 B. c., given 
in Biot’s first series of articles and repeated in his last 
series, to be startled by meeting with distances from the 
equator rising as high as over twenty degrees. In fact, 
the average of declination of the determinants is nearly 
nine degrees (8° 52/), while that of their latitude, or 
distance from the ecliptic, is only a little over ten de- 
grees. This difference is obviously too small to serve 
as the foundation of a theory involving their selection 
with reference to the equator ; especially, when the dif- 
ferent requirements in the two cases are considered: 
those who had to choose along the fixed line of the equi- 
noctial circle, and were willing to go as low as stars of 
the fifth magnitude, should have managed to attain a 
very much nearer average vicinity than those who, in the 
establishment of a lunar zodiac, were looking for con- 
spicuous groups, and did not feel bound to the immediate 
vicinity of the ecliptic. Even the Hindu junction-stars, 
despite the introduction into their system of such remote 
constellations as the Lyre, the Eagle, and the Dolphin, 
average but twelve and a half degrees from the ecliptic. 
In fact, a very cursory ocular inspection of our stellar 
chart, on which the equator of 2357 B. c. has been laid 
down with special reference to this question, will be enough 
to show that the series of Chinese determinants has no con- 
spicuous relation to that line except in the eighth, ninth, 


388 | THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 


and tenth members, which our first table (above, p. 357) 
exhibits as probable deviations from the original system — 
deviations which we may, to be sure, suppose to have 
been made for the purpose of approaching the equator ; 
but also, more. probably, in order to draw a more direct 
line of transition between the seventh member and the 
eleventh : at any rate, no such momentous conclusion as 
Biot would fain derive from their situation can be looked 
upon as well-founded. 

We come next to consider the other alleged motive of 
selection — namely, the correspondence of the deter- 
mining stars in right ascension with the circumpolars. 
The best way, doubtless, to test the validity of M. Biot’s 
inferences upon this point will be to examine in a little 
detail a sample of the reasonings on which they are 
founded. They are given in full in one of the tables 
which form part of his earliest series of articles.1 He 
begins with the division Hiu, marked by £ Aquarii, as 
being nearest to the winter solstice. This division con- 
tains ten degrees of right ascension; its determinant is 
nearly seven degrees from the solstice, and has fifteen 
degrees of south declination. Hiu includes also the in- 
ferior transits of the two bright circumpolars y and 6 Urs 
Majoris, but the one is six and a half, the other seven 
and a half degrees from its commencement. Who has 
the skill to discover here any. ground for the selection of 
B Aquarii? The next stew, Goei, is marked by a Aquarii, 
which has thirteen degrees of south declination, and is 
three degrees distant in right ascension from 6 Ursz 
Majoris, which Biot points out as having determined its 
selection; it extends nineteen degrees, to the circle of 
declination of « Urse Majoris. This star is held to have 
fixed the choice of the determinant of She, a Pegasi ; 
and the coincidence of the two in right ascension is, for 
once, as close as could be desired. The limiting star of 


1 Journal des Savants, for April, 1840. 


THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 889 


the next sieu, Pi, is y Pegasi; chosen, we are. told, on 
account of its relation to the superior transit of 6 Urse 
Majoris, and the inferior of ¢ of the same constellation. 
The interval between the two transits is six degrees, and 
is nearly halved by the circle of declination of the deter- 
minant. Here, again, the plausibility of the argument 
is of the very faintest character: if the relation of the 
determinant to the circumpolars is to be thus elastic, if 
the circle of declination of the former is now to coincide 
nearly with that of one of the latter, now to fall midway 
between two of them, and now to be arranged to include 
them, it ought to be possible to account thus for the 
selection of a good part of any possible series ; there will 
only now and then present itself an unmanageable case, 
that resists all attempts at explanation. Such a one is 
very near occurring at this point. For M. Biot is nota 
little doubtful as to how he shall account for the choice 
of £ Andromedz as determinant of the next station, Koei. 
After suggesting and recalling two or three very unac- 
ceptable explanations, he thinks it on the whole most 
likely that the star was intended to mark the point sit- 
uated a half quadrant from the solstice, it being in fact 
rather less than three degrees from occupying such a. sit- 
uation! The next determinant, 8 Arietis, introducing 
the mansion Leu, actually agrees quite closely in right 
ascension with a Ursze Majoris, our present pole-star, but 
then twenty-five degrees from the pole. But the follow- 
ing one, a Muscz (or 35 Arietis), which has no definable 
relation to any circumpolars, is declared by M. Biot to 
have been added to the system by Cheu-Kong, about 
1100 B. c., in the manner already related. ‘The mansion 
Mao, which now succeeds, is marked by 7 Tauri, the most 
brilliant of the Pleiads: this also has no cireumpolar 
relations, but finds its raison d’étre in the fact that it 
marked the vernal equinox of 2357 B.c.; on which ac- 
count it is even made by Biot the starting-point of the 


890 | THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 


whole series—as Weber maintains, without any support 
from the Chinese authorities. The farther limit of the 
mansion, « Tauri, we are told, was fixed so as to “in- 
clude ” the inferior transit of a Draconis; and the more 
brilliant Hyad, Aldebaran, was neglected because it was 
four degrees farther from the transit in question. But 
even ¢ is more than four degrees too far east ; why, then, 
was not y or 6 taken instead? If any one object that a 
_ Draconis was but two and a half degrees from the pole, 
and that hence the Chinese might easily have made an 
error in referring it to the equator, I should admit the 
force of the objection, but should claim further that it 
might have excused the selection of Aldebaran itself; 
and I should add that this whole theory of close observa- 
tions made by the Chinese, twenty-five centuries before 
Christ, upon the transits of stars situated very near to 
the pole, and of their determination of equatorial stations 
thereby, is destitute of even a tolerable degree of plausi- 
bility. Next we come to a perfect nest of difficulties. 
We have two narrow stations, Tse and Tsan, which 
together occupy only a little more than six degrees of 
right ascension, followed by a third, Tsing, of over thirty 
_ degrees. The determinant of the first station, A Orionis, 
is pretty near the equator; but that of the second, 6 
Orionis, is 184° south of that line, and that of the third, 
p» Geminorum, more than 12° north of it. Here, now, is 
an opportunity for our astronomer’s mode of explanation 
to display its value; if it can account satisfactorily for 
such an anomalous state of things as this, we can hardly 
avoid accepting it. But it can do no such thing; it 
breaks down entirely, and has not a single word to say 
for itself. The only circumpolar transit having any rela- 
tion to the three determinants is that of « Draconis, of 
the third magnitude, and 8° from the pole; and M. Biot 
confesses that he finds no evidence of its having ever re- 
ceived special attention from the Chinese. Nevertheless, 


THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 394 © 


he thinks that Tse, of less than 3°, may have been estab- 
lished to.“ include” it, and that Tsan, of 33°, may have 
been established to “include” it at an earlier period, 
when its circle of declination reached the equator farther 
to the east! As to » Geminorum, no reason for its se- 
lection is to be discovered. This scantiness of circumpo- 
lar relations as justifying the three crowded determina- 
tives Tse, Tsan, and Tsing, is set in still stronger light 
by contrast with the one next following, 9 Cancri. Why 
this particular star, which is hardly visible to the naked 
eye, and 201° from the equator, should have been chosen 
to mark the limit of the asterism, M. Biot finds it ‘*im- 
possible to conceive ;”’ but the position of its circle, and 
the immense extent of the station, he regards as alto- 
gether justified by reference to the superior transits of a 
and 8 Ursz Majoris, which had to be waited for before 
the station could be closed. But, by his own account, 
the interval in right ascension between these two stars is 
near 12°, and the limiting circle, in order to apply to 
them both, is compelled to fall midway between them. So 
we see that, in order to save the credit of M. Biot’s hy- 
pothesis, we shall be obliged to allow that the faint and 
undistinguished star « Draconis could give locality to two 
or three determinatives, and fix the limits of as many 
mansions, while the brilliant « and 8 of the Great Bear, 
two of the most conspicuous of the circumpolars, could 
have but one equatorial representative between them, 
and that one just short of invisible, and immensely 
remote from the equator! I am persuaded that the 
majority of unprejudiced critics will think, with me, that 
a theory which can only be retained at the cost of such 
assumptions as this had better itself be abandoned. But 
it must not fail to be noted further that the circle of 
declination of B is within less than two degrees of that 
of 38 Hydre, the determinant of the next station, Lieu ; 
and their near agreement is pointed out by M. Biot, and 


392: THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 


left to be regarded as the alternative ground of selection 
of the latter star: he forgetting for the:moment that this 
is one of the four which he had already “ proved by 
scientific evidence ’’ to have been added to the system by 
Cheu-Kong, more than twelve centuries later. 

We need carry no farther our examination of M. Biot’s 
arguments and inferences ; we should not find among the 
rest of them any more unequivocal evidence in favor of 
his theory. He who, after a careful survey of the entire 
exposition, can think that we have “ positive scientific . 
evidence”’ to the effect that the emperor Yao selected 
twenty-four of the twenty-eight stew in the twenty-fourth 
century before Christ, and that Cheu-Kong added the 
remainder thirteen centuries later, must estimate in a 
very peculiar manner the nature of scientific evidence 
and its application to the solution of historical questions. 
I do not hesitate to express my absolute and entire want 
of faith in the whole argument. In my view, what M. 
Biot has done may fairly be described as follows: he has 
reduced the stew from twenty-eight to twenty-four by an 
arbitrary excision, and relegation to a later period, of 
four of their number ; he has set up a series of nineteen 
circumpolar stars, whose upper and lower transits he as- 
sumes to have been observed with especial care by the 
ancient Chinese, although in some cases he has to confess 
that he can find no documentary evidence of the fact, 
and although several of them were so close to the pole 
that their accurate observation would require a degree of 
scientific skill which the whole later history of astronomy 
in China shows not to have been possessed: these nine- 
teen stars give him thirty-eight transits; he has then 
forced the twenty-four limiting stars into an artificial 
and imaginary relation to the thirty-eight transits, by 
allowing the former to have been established, sometimes - 
for the purpose of coinciding with the latter, sometimes 
for the purpose of including them; leaving, after all, 


THE LUNAR ZODIAG.. 393 


some of the most important transits unrepresented by 
sieu, and having to confess that some of the stew find no 
sufficient explanation in the transits. There are, indeed, 
a few curious and striking coincidences brought out by 
the comparison, and these must doubtless have suggested 
to M. Biot his ingenious hypothesis; but they are no 
more than may with entire plausibility be supposed the 
result of chance, and they are utterly insufficient to con- 
vert the hypothesis into an acceptable explanation.! 

If M. Biot’s attempt to prove the native Chinese ori- 
gin of the main body of siew in the twenty-fourth century 
before Christ, and its extension by Chinese hands to its 
present form in the eleventh century, be declared a fail- 
ure even on internal evidence alone, and if the essential 
identity of the stew, the nakshatras, and the mandzil be 
conceded, as it must be by every well-informed person, 
then we should be justified in drawing the conclusion 
that, whatever they may have become in later times, the 
siew were originally a series of stellar groups, equally dis- 
tributed along the,ecliptic; and our inquiries would be 
directed to the discovery of evidence showing that in 
China, as in India, the system of groups had been con- 
verted, for certain purposes, into one of determinants. 
So far as I know, M. Biot lets slip only at a single point 
so much asa hint that any one had ever actually thought 
of the stew as constellations. At the foot, namely, of.his 
second table, in the articles of 1840 (and repeated in 
those of 1861), he gives the meaning of some of the sew 
names, nearly all of which would fit groups better than 


1 This refutation and rejection of Biot’s theory, on evidence furnished (with 
the utmost good faith) by himself alone, is but a reproduction of part of an arti- 
cle in the Journ. Am. Or. Soc. vol. viii. 1864. In the new edition of Cole- 
brooke’s Essays (London, 1873, vol. ii. p. 282), [ am quoted, by an oversight of 
the learned editor, Professor Cowell, as favoring and supporting Biot’s view of 
the derivation of the Indian system of nakshatras from the Chinese siew ; the 
quotation being from the notes to the Sérya-Siddhanta, published four years 
earlier, at a time when I had not yet worked myself free from the influence of 
the great French astronomer’s confident statements and specious reasonings. 


394 THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 


single stars, while of one he says: ‘the Chinese char- 
acter for Pi means ‘the snare’ (le filet), which is the 
figurative designation of the Hyades.” I drew attention 
to this as a pregnant indication in 1864,! and remarked 
that, in view of the Indian and Arabian aspects of the 
system, it might be dangerous to assume that, when an 
early Chinese authority names a szew, only the single 
star which the later astronomers know by that name can 
be meant, or even that the division of the heavens, 
where one is implied, is to be reckoned from star to star, 
and not, as in the other two systems, by simple proxim- 
ity to the group named. And later examination of au- 
thorities then inaccessible to me raises this suspicion to 
a certainty. Thus, the Jesuit missionary Gaubil, the 
father and founder of European knowledge of Chinese 
astronomy, always speaks of the szew as “‘ constellations,” 
and here and there defines the groups of which one or 
another is composed.?, Again, M. Am.-Sédillot, the emi- 
nent orientalist and mathematician, in his Matériaux 
etc. (see above, p. 351, note), gives,.as already stated, 
the whole series of groups, and repeatedly points out 
(e. g., p. 042) that, ‘“ when the determining stars, which 
have suggested so many considerations, so many calcula- 
tions, so many lofty hypotheses, are restored to the con- 
_ stellations of which they form a part, and which the Chi- 
nese themselves have adopted, we see reappear as if by 
enchantment the various parts of the Arab system, and 
are obliged at once to acknowledge that we have here 
really the twenty-eight lunar stations, and by no means 
divisions that are independent of the movements of our 
satellite.’ And once more, in Mr. Williams’s recent and 
independent work, on the Chinese observations of comets 

1 Journ. Am. Or. Soe. viii. 43. 

2 Thus, in Souciet’s collection, vol. iii. p. 32: ‘‘ One sees still that the con- 
stellation Fang [fifteenth stew, 8, 5, 7, p Scorpionis] is so well pointed out by the 


number of four stars of which it is composed, and of whit the bright one (Ja 
Lucide) is the chief.’ 


THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 395 


(also referred to above), the author, in the course of his 
*‘ Introductory Remarks” on the Chinese astronomy in 
general, expresses himself as follows (p. xxi.): ‘* The Chi- 
nese divide the visible heavens into thirty-one portions ; 
twenty-eight of these may be termed the stellar divisions, 
and receive their names from, or are determined by, an 
asterism, generally forming the central or principal one 
of the division. ‘The determination by an asterism hay- 
ing the same name has been preferred by me to that by 
any particular star in that asterism, as being, to the best 
of my judgment, more in accordance with the Chinese 
mode of proceeding ; in which, as far as my experience 
goes, the asterism alone is mentioned, and not a deter- 
mining star in that asterism.” And to the same effect 
later (p. xxvi.). Mr. Willianis’s definition of the asteris- 
mal groups accords quite closely with that of M. Sédillot. 
He reports also the series of determining stars, but gives 
them as ‘according to Biot’ — apparently, as finding 
no more ancient or genuinely Chinese authority on which 
to rely for them. And in the appendix to the work he 
presents a series of little star-charts, in which each asterism 
is set down, in company with the other groups belonging 
to that division of the heavens to which the asterism gives 
name —the division being, as in the Hindu system, the 
circumjacent region, though not an equal twenty-eighth 
part of the ecliptic. 

In these statements, now, is evidently implied the com- 
plete and irretrievable overthrow of M. Biot’s views as to 
the stew and their history. And I find it extremely hard 
to understand how a savant who had seemed to show else- 
where such entire and simple good faith in his own ex- 
positions and reasonings, often himself putting into our 
hands the means of overthrowing his mistaken conclu- 
sions, should have allowed himself at this point to ignore 
and omit a very important part of the evidence bearing 
upon his case. That he did not believe himself here also 


396 | THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 


to be acting in good faith, I have not the least disposition 
to suggest; but great indeed must have been his prepos- 
session, to warp his judgment to such an extent. The 
whole subject was one upon which he had an intense per- 
sonal feeling, conceiving that his statements and argu- 
ments had been treated with undue disregard and disre- 
spect by the Indianists, and that he had no justice to 
expect at their hands; and he was so under the dominion 
‘of preconceived opinion as to be incapable of receiving 
new light. His view of the Hindu system of nakshatras 
was wholly and perversely wrong, and even in his articles 
upon our Sidrya-Siddhanta he passed without the least 
notice alike the general (provisional) assent to his theory 
which it contained and its specific objections to certain 
points in that theory. It must, I think, be conceded that, 
whatever his deserts may be in other respects as to the 
history of Chinese astronomy — of that Iam not a com- 
petent judge — his discussion of this particular institution 
is of no substantial value ; so far as it is concerned, he has 
justified the worst of the suspicions expressed by Weber, 
which he resented so highly ; he has added one more to 
the long list of those able mathematicians who have shown 
a disabling incapacity to discuss questions involving his- 
torical and documentary as well as scientific evidence. 
The refutation of Biot’s particular theory as to the 
nature and history of the system of stew does not, of 
course, finally settle the question as to whether the Chi- 
nese lunar zodiac may have been the original from which 
the others were derived. But it does-appear to me to 
settle pretty effectually the question as to the possibility 
of proving it such. When it comes to a comparison of 
the antiquity of appearance in one or another country, 
there enter into the question too many elements of uncer- 
tainty to permit of our arriving at a satisfactory conclusion. 
Weber, in his first essay on the nakshatras, endeavors to 
show that there is no distinct appearance of the siew as a 


THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 397 


system in China until the third century before Christ ; Biot 
had held that they can be traced many centuries earlier, 
to the very dawn of the Chinese literature. But even in 
the latter case, they might well enough have been bor- 
rowed from some more western people, from whom the 
Arabs and Hindus also derived them. I will dwell upon 
the point no longer here, but will rather go on to examine 
the other and opposing views which have been brought 
forward. : 

We will take up first, as being of most authority and 
importance, those of Professor A. Weber of Berlin. This 
great scholar has put forth, in the Transactions of the 
Berlin Academy for 1860 and 1861, two elaborate essays, 
covering nearly two hundred quarto pages,! entitled ‘“ In- 
formation from the Vedas respecting the nakshatras.” 
The former of the two is a “historical introduction,” in 
which, after explaining the occasion of the investigation 
and setting forth the plan of his argument, the author 
enters into a somewhat detailed critical examination of 
the Chinese authorities relied on by Biot, arriving at the 
result already reported above, that there is no certain evi- 
dence of the lunar zodiac in China earlier than 250 B. ¢., 
and that therefore the greater traceable age of the institu- 
tion in India is evidence rather of derivation from India 
to China than of the contrary. And he concludes with 
some discussion of the more general relations of the sys- 
tem, and notices of the Arabian, Persian, and Egyptian 
systems, deriving from them confirmation of his main 
argument. This argument forms the subject of the sec- 
ond essay, which offers us a collection of materials for the 
study of the aspects and applications of the nakshatras in 
the earliest period of their history such as no other living 
_ scholar could have furnished,‘and which is to be regarded 

_ as practically exhaustive: the probability is of the small- 
est that anything will ever be discovered seriously modi- 


1 They have been repeatedly quoted and referred to already in this paper. 


398 | THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 


fying the picture of the institution here exhibited. This 
is a service of the highest order; if any competent 
scholar would do the like for the stew, he would give the 
discussion and comparison on the Chinese side a solid 
basis which it has hitherto greatly lacked. In virtue of 
this assemblage of materials, Weber’s essays have a value 
which is quite independent of his argument upon the 
question of origin. 

For, as regards the argument itself, I find myself unable 
to admit its validity and assent to its conclusions. The 
author’s principal thesis, to the proof of which his second 
essay is devoted, is this: ‘the szew [as likewise the man- 
dzil], in respect of order, number, identity of limiting 
stars, and inequality of distance, correspond to one of the 
most modern phases of the Hindu nakshatras, prior to 
which these have their own peculiar history of develop- 
ment.’’ He does, indeed, hesitate to draw from this the 
inference that the szew and manézil are a derivation from 
the nakshatras ; but I do not see how, the thesis being 
granted, such inference can possibly be avoided. If an 
institution has passed through a succession of phases in . 
the hands of one nation, and is found in the hands of 
another in a form corresponding with the last of those 
phases, it. must be very positive and unequivocal evidence 
indeed which shall have the right to convince us that the 
latter nation did not borrow it from the former, at the 
end of its history of changes. And the opposing consid- 
erations by which Weber is made distrustful of the force 
of his own argument are really of no appreciable weight 
as against it: they are in part ‘“‘ the incongruences upon 
which Biot lays such stress ”” — incongruences which have 
no existence whatever save in Biot’s misapprehensions — 
and in part: correspondences and differences among the 
members of the three systems which could well enough 
be forced into accordance with the theory of derivation 
from India, provided that derivation were established by 


THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 399 


any such powerful evidence as Weber seeks to bring to its 
support. But, to my mind, his main thesis itself, without 
proving which he has proved nothing, and leaves the 
question of origin as unsettled as he found it, rests on no 
acceptable basis. I maintain, in opposition to it, that the 
nakshatras have been a fairly stable system, the only trust- 
worthy measure of whose deviations from its assumable 
original is given by a comparison with the stew and man- 
ézil, as drawn out in our first table (above, pp. 357, 858). 

The detailed evidences of the shifting character of the 
Hindu lunar zodiac upon which Weber relies are (apart 
from the relation of the numbers twenty-seven and twen- 
ty-eight, of which I shall speak later) variations in the 
names of the asterisms, discordance as regards the divin- 
ities to whom they are declared to belong, differences in 
the number of stars composing the groups, as reported 
by different authorities, ancient and modern; and other 
the like. But all such variations are, within certain 
limits, perfectly natural and allowable, and reconcilable 
with the maintenance of the integrity of the system ; they 
may even come to be evidence of its unaltered identity, 
as in more than one instance I think they actually are. 
And when they are of a more doubtful character, their 
interpretation one way or the other must be mainly de- 
termined by the balance of general probabilities. It is 
because Weber and I estimate the antecedent probabil- 
ities so differently, that we draw from the same facts 
diverse conclusions. [I hold that a lunar zodiac does not 
consist in a recognition of the fact that the moon makes 
the circuit of the heavens in twenty-seven or twenty-eight 
days, and that hence, if there were any way of dividing 
her path into a corresponding number of nearly equal 
spaces, she would traverse each of them ina day; such 
a recognition is only a preliminary to the establishment 
of a system, and need not issue in anything ; we have it 
ourselves, without therefore having a lunar zodiac. The 


400 | THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 


institution is founded when the determining stars or 
groups of stars are selected, assigned to their purpose, 
and combined into a series; and not until this is done. 
It is not an ideal thing, a theory, constantly seeking new 
incorporation in the sky, and shifting from series to 
series and from group to group; it is a visible and con- 
crete thing, made up of the selected asterisms and bound 
to them. The name nakshatra, by which the members 
of the system in India are called, is sufficiently indicative 
of this character: whatever the etymology of the word, 
it signifies simply ‘ star, asterism, constellation;’ it is given 
in the Veda to the constellations in general, and to the 
sun himself, as a heavenly body; the Strya-Siddhanta 
even applies it to Sirius and Capella and the few other 
fixed stars outside the series whose places are defined in 
that work ; and its ordinary synonyms are bha and dhish- 
nya, having the same meaning; the three terms are 
merely used with pregnant significance when made .to 
designate the asterisms that compose the system. Such 
a concrete institution is capable of being described, handed 
down by tradition, communicated to another people. 
And, when once fairly adopted and introduced into use, 
it is, whether indigenous or borrowed, virtually a thing of 
native growth, having its further history of development 
determined by internal circumstances. It is not exempt 
from change, eithef in the act of reception or later; but 
every probability is against its being altered. easily, per- 
vadingly, frequently, or in mere imitation of the example. 
of other peoples: and alterations are not to be assumed 
lightly, or on other than cogent evidence.. On the other 
hand, the initial point in such an annular series of groups 
is a matter of very subordinate consequence. There is 
not in nature a point fixed at which the reckoning should 
begin, any more than there is.a natural commencement 
of the year. Any people who should have advanced far 
enough in astronomical knowledge to recognize the equi-. 


THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 401 


noxes and solstices could hardly fail to begin from one of 
these, but might readily enough change to another, if 
change of calendar, or improvement of knowledge, should 
suggest such alteration as desirable. 

Mere variations of name, certainly, in a language so 
fertile of scientific synonyms as is the Sanskrit, are not to 
be taken as even primdé facie evidence of variation of 
position ; unless the different names are so characteristic, 
and point so distinctly to different stars or groups, that 
the conclusion of their diverse application is forced upon 
us. I cannot see that this is actually so in a single case ; 
nor does Weber. make the claim, or endeavor to show 
that any given name of a nakshatra would be better ex- 
plained. by referring it to a constellation not included in 
the series. For the most part, the names are not at all 
plainly descriptive, and their variants tell us nothing : but 
if Mrigacirsha, ‘stag’s head,’ is called also andhaké, 
‘blind,’ it may possibly enough be from the dimness of © 
the group indicated ; if Ardra is styled bdhu, ‘ arm, fore- 
lee,’ it is certainly because the star in question marks the 
foreleg of the same “stag” (mriga), whose head consti- 
tutes the preceding asterism ; rohini, ‘ruddy,’ as occasional 
alternative appellation of Jyeshtha (Antares, etc.), seems 
to allude to the reddish hue of the principal star; pra- 
tishthdna, ‘ support,’ is an evident synonym of Proshtha- 
padas, ‘ stool-feet ’— and so with the other cases, of which 
these are the most striking examples. 

Non-agreement in respect to the divinities selected as 
regents of the groups is of even less consequence. It is 
undeniable that in the Brihmanas we approach pretty 
near to the beginnings, whether by origination or impor- 
tation, of the nakshatra system in India; and as no par- 
ticular reason can be made out for the selection of one 
deity rather than another as lord of a particular asterism, 
we may with every reason suppose that for a time, at least, 


more or less discordance in the choice would be found. 
26 


402 THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 


Differences in the number of stars regarded as compos- 
ing an asterism would be of more telling weight, if they 
were such as could not be readily explained by the char- 
acter and surroundings of the group with which the aster- 
ism is identified. But in nearly every case, I believe, they 
are so explainable. If, for instance, the Kvittikas (the 
Pleiads) are counted now as six and now as seven, we 
have only to notice that the Greeks also acknowledge 
seven Pleiads, counting in a lost sister, and that to the 
Germans they are still das Siebengestirn, ‘ the seven stars.’ 
That the brilliant star Aldebaran was now taken by 
itself to form the asterism, and now along with the other 
members of the group of which it is the chief ornament, 
is no reason for inferring a change in the position of the 
asterism. That ¢ Hydre was sometimes added to the 
little group of five stars constituting the asterism 
Aclesha, and ¢ or « Delphini to the four (ravishthas, i is 
not less easy to believe. That, of the extended series 
forming the tail of the Scorpion, now only the bright pair 
in the sting were made to stand for the asterism Mala, 
even under their special dual name Vicritaéu, and that 
now more or fewer of the others were included with them, 
is, though a variation of more moment, not enough to 
impeach the identity of the asterism. 

If a group has a plural name in the ancient records, 
we must, unless some good reason to the contrary can be 
shown, regard it as having been composed of more than 
two stars; but such a name may vary to singular with- 
out implying more than its contemplation as a single 
group, an individual member of the system, one of the 
moon’s consorts, or the like. A dual name, again, is yet 
more clearly indicative of a pair of stars: and wherever 
the nomenclature of the system presents us such a name, 
we actually find in the heavens a conspicuous pair to 
which to attach it: we have, for Agvayujau, B and y 
Arietis; for Punarvasfi, a and 8 Geminorum; and so 


THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 403 


on. These duals may vary to singular in the same way 
as the plurals do; or to plurals, by the extension of the 
groups to include other neighboring stars. Another case 
of variation between singular, dual, and plural, is liable 
to arise in connection with the double groups, divided 
into ‘¢ former ”’ and “ latter ’’ asterisms of the same name. 
A not unimportant testimony to the stability of the sys- 
tem is furnished by the fact that, where these double 
names occur, we find no difficulty in explaining their 
application, as belonging to double groups. To conclude, 
however, from a singular name that the asterism contains 
but one star, is much more questionable, and may even be 
palpably ungrounded, since the title may from the begin- 
ning have belonged to the group asa group. Thus, for 
example, the name Mrigagiras, ‘stag’s head,’ has noth- 
ing whatever to say respecting the number of stars of 
which it may be the collective designation ; while Hasta, 
‘hand,’ may most plausibly be regarded as pointing out 
the very group of five stars to which we find it attached 
by the astronomical text-books. 

The final conclusion, then, at which Weber arrives, 
that there are but four of the asterisms with regard to 
the number of whose composing stars there is utter 
absence of discordance among the different authorities, 
although it looks quite startling, is after all innocent 
enough, since it is founded on differences which are in 
part unproved and in part trivial. There are but one or 
two in this whole class of variations which need cause 
difficulty to any one;! and even in these cases, our faith 
in the unchanged identity of the asterism does not require 
to be seriously shaken. 


1 Tt seems strange, namely, that a single star out of so faint a group as Pushya 
(y,9,9 Cancri) should have been by any authority regarded as alone consti- 
tuting the asterism. It is also hard to see why the name of Ardra (a Orionis) 
should by one or two authorities be given in the plural, and why its synonym 
bahu, ‘arm,’ is once made dual, as if a group of two or more stars were in- 
tended to be pointed out : possibly this points to a constitution of Ardra corre- 
sponding with that given to the Chinese siew (above, p. 352). 


404 3 THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 


I know of no other way to illustrate the peculiarity of 
Weber’s point of view, and of his method of combining 
and judging the probabilities of each separate case, so 
well as by quoting an example or two of his conjectural 
explanations of the data given by his authorities. The 
asterism Cravana is identified beyond all doubt or ques- 
tion in the later astronomy with the conspicuous constel- 
lation of the Eagle, a star of the first magnitude, with a 
‘somewhat smaller one above and another below. If, then, 
we find in earlier authorities the same asterism described 
as a group of three stars, how can we help regarding the 
notice as pretty good proof of its unaltered identity? But 
to Weber the correspondence is as if it existed not; and 
he suggests, as reason for the assigned number three, that 
Cravana is capable of being. translated ‘ ear,’ and so led 
people to think of a pair of ears with a head between 
them. There is another still more striking instance of 
the same character. We have already seen that the star 
Aldebaran is called by the Hindus Rohini, ‘ ruddy,’ prob- 
ably from its reddish hue. But rohint is also the name 
of the female red-deer. The Hindus further figured the 
neighboring Orion as a stag ; this appears from the name 
Mrigaciras, ‘ stag’s head,’ given to the little group of 
three stars in Orion’s head, and that of déhu, ‘arm,’ to 
the bright star in his left shoulder, and also from the tra- 
dition about to be related. The somewhat remoter Sirius, 
too, is named in the astronomical text-books Mrigayvya- 
dha, ‘ deer-slayer.’ Here, now, is a series of constellations 
with related names; by what steps the nomenclature 
established itself is matter for conjecture ; but the iden- 
tity and connection of the three groups is rendered un- 
questionable by an absurd story which the early Hindus 
have founded upon it, and which Weber cites in different 
forms, from more than one of the Brahmanas. Prajapati, 
‘the lord of created beings’ (a divinity often called upon 
to play a part in these artificial legends, in the manufact- 


THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 405 


ure of which, to order and in batches, the Hindus of the 
Brahmana period were so apt), it is said, fell in love with 
his own daughter; she fleeing from him in the form of a 
doe, he pursued her as a stag, and was only deterred from 
his incestuous chase by being shot with an arrow by the 
appointed agent of the indignant gods. There is the 
whole story illustrated in the sky : the innocent and lovely 
Rohini (Aldebaran) ; the infamous Prajapati (Orion), 
in full career after her, but laid sprawling by the “ three- 
jointed arrow”’ (the belt of Orion), which, shot from the 
hand of the near avenger (Sirius), is even now to be 
seen sticking in his body. With this tale coming down 
to us from the earliest period of the use of the nakshatras 
in India, and with the position of the asterism Mrigaciras 
assured by its astronomical definition in the latest period, 
- one would think that here, at least, was a member of the 
series as to whose maintenance of identity from the begin- 
ning to the end no question could be raised; and that 
when the first authority, like the last, pronounces it a 
group of threestars, he did so because it actually was 
such a group, no more and no less. ‘To Weber, however, 
the presumption of an unstable system, with ever-shifting 
groups, is strong enough to overbear all this; and he 
imagines the number three to be given by mere inference 
from the name: a stag’s head, with a horn on each side, 
naturally suggested that number. And if the Hindu 
lexica declare invakdés, a rare and obscure alternative 
name for the same asterism, to be a synonym of mriga- 
ciras, he is ready to assume that they do so only by an 
inferential blunder. 

There are one or two general considerations to which 
it may be well to call attention as having unduly biased 
Weber’s judgment, leading him in special cases to form a 
partial and mistaken estimate of the probabilities. The 
first is, that he is too willing to transfer to the Hindus 
of the olden time the indifference and ignorance shown 


406 | THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 


by their recent descendants with relation to the stellar 
constituents of the asterismal system. This ignorance 
has for a long time been very marked. ‘The celebrated 
Arab astronomer and mathematician al-Birtin?, who vis- 
ited India in the eleventh century, was able to obtain from 
the Hindu savants of his day only a partial identification 
of their asterisms, and has to mark seven or eight of the 
series as doubtful; and‘he speaks very slightingly of the 
practical acquaintance with the heavens possessed by 
his authorities.1 The modern investigators, Sir William 
Jones and Colebrooke, were met by the same difficulty ; 
and Jones’s comparison of the nakshatras and manézil, the 
first attempt in this direction,? was in consequence ex- 
tremely imperfect. Colebrooke, by his unsurpassed skill, 
learning, and thoroughness, and by consultation with many 
of the foremost Hindu scholars of his time, was enabled to 
reach the best results attainable in that method, although 
leaving many points still doubtful.2 Yet more recently, 
Rev. Mr. Burgess, when he was engaged upon the Stirya- 
Siddhanta, spent much time and labor in the attempt 
to derive new information from his native assistants, 
but succeeded in obtaining absolutely nothing to-add to 
what Colebrooke had furnished. And, as a last example, 
Bapti-Deva Castrin, one of the most learned and able 
of the living Hindu votaries of the science, in his trans- 
lation of the Stirya-Siddhanta (referred to above, p. 366, 
note), makes no pretense to an independent opinion as to 

1 See Biot, in the Journal des Savants for 1845. 

2 Asiatic Researches, vol. ii. 1790. 

3 My own determinations, in the notes to the Strya- Siddhanta, were 
founded in part upon new materials, inaccessible to Colebrooke — for example, 
Ideler’s researches on the mandzil and Biot’s on the stew —in part upon a more 
exact comparison than had been attempted by Colebrooke of the positions given 
by the Hindus for their junction-stars with those of the modern catalogues, 
and a new and independent review and combination of all the data, from all 
sources. And while the general result was to reaffirm the greater part of Cole- 
brooke’s identifications, sometimes with more confidence than he had himself 


felt in making them, I was able also in several cases to alter and amend his 
conclusions. 


THE LUNAR ZODIAC, 407 


the identity of the asterismal groups, but adopts implicitly, 
and in every point, Colebrooke’s determinations.! All this 
state of things, however, I conceive to have begun when 
the Hindus were turned from rude observers into exact 
calculators ; when the precise data and methods of their 
borrowed astronomical science sent the student to his 
closet instead of to the open fields, as the scene of his 
learned labors; when the asterism in which the moon 
should be found at any particular time could be determined 
with exactness by one who never looked at the sky, and 
was unable to tell one star from another. I have already 
pointed out that their modern system was not constructed 
or manipulated on the supposition that it would or 
could be improved by further observation. That the 
ancient astronomers knew very well what groups consti- 
tuted the series, and were able to hand down the knowl- 
edge unimpaired from generation to generation, appears 
clearly enough from the close accordance between the 
Hindu system and those of the other nations of Asia. If, 
as Weber points out, the Kathaka is willing sometimes, in 
view of the intricacy of the astrological doctrine of the 
nakshatras, to leave it to the option of the individual 
sacrificer whether he will take any account of them, we 
are hot required to draw any further conclusion than that 
the treatise shows a commendable and unusual liberality 
as spiritual guide. 

The second consideration is, that Weber feels, more 
than he intends or is aware, the influence of the view 
put forth and persistently supported by Biot, that the 
divisions of the ecliptic under the asterismal system are 
reckoned from star to star, or from group to group ; 
and hence that a system of equal divisions requires stars 

1 Bapfi-Deva’s entire, though unacknowledged, subserviency in this matter 
requires to be remarked, lest it be supposed that he intelligently and inde- 
pendently ratifies his predecessor’s conclusions. Even Colebrooke’s identifi- 


cation of Apaimvatsa with ‘‘b 1, 2, 3 in Virgo”’’ is copied, although I had 
already pointed out that there are no stars known to science by those names. 


408 | THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 


equally distributed, and every separate deviation from it 
a peculiar corresponding series of asterisms. ‘This, as has 
been already abundantly shown, is merely an unauthor- 
ized transfer on the part of Biot to the nakshatras of a 
mode of reckoning which he erroneously considered to 
belong to the stew. According to the true understanding 
of the institution, a variety of modes of division much 
greater than that found among the Hindu authorities is 
capable of ready reconciliation with a single unaltered se- 
ries of star-groups ; especially if we take into account the 
ancient absence of exact measurements, and the freer lib- 
erty thence resulting for arbitrary or fanciful divisions. 
So far as I can see, the only instance in which Weber 
is able to bring forward anything like positive evidence 
that the series of asterisms has undergone a change dur- 
ing the period of its traceable history in India, is the 
following. The. Taittirfya-Brahmana (one of the earliest 
authorities), in a certain passage, constructs an asteris- 
mal prajépati, giving him Citra (a Virginis) for head, 
Hasta (Corvus) for hand, the Vicékhe ( a and B Libre) 
for thighs, and the Anuradhas (8, 6, and = Scorpionis) for 
standing-place ; while Nishtyé (7. e., Svati) is declared 
to be his heart. This would make a tolerable figure, as 
constellational figures go, but for the heart: which, if 
Nishty& must be sought in Arcturus, lies some 30° out 
of place ; while, if it can be identified with the stew and 
manzil (14, x, and » Virginis), the incongruence is re- 
moved. Hence we are to infer that the authors of the 
Brahmana regarded the asterism succeeding Citra as 
situated where the corresponding member of the other 
systems is situated, or close upon the ecliptic. The force 
of the argument and the probability of its conclusion are 
not to be denied: I am unwilling, however, to regard 
the inference as altogether certain ; partly because of the 
reckless ways of the Brahmana authors, and the possibil- 
ity that the constructor of this figure may have been 


THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 409 


careless of the position of the heart, when all the other 
parts fitted so fairly ; and partly because the name nishtyd, 
‘foreigner, outcast,’ as synonym of Svati, seems most 
plausibly to designate it as a group lying far away from 
the rest of the series. But, so far as concerns the bearing 
of the case on the question we are now discussing, we 
have to note that Svati is one of the six or seven aster- 
isms which a simple comparison with the other systems 
shows to have changed its place in India, we cannot say 
just when or why ; and further, that to find a member of 
the nakshatra-series occupying formerly in India the place | 
which it has to the end in Arabia and China, would make 
directly and strongly against Weber’s principal thesis, 
that the two latter systems represent and are derived 
from an ultimate phase of the former. 

It remains only to consider the relation of the numbers 
twenty-seven and twenty-eight, as those of the asterisms 
of the Hindu series.» Weber holds that the groups were 
at the outset twenty-seven, and that they became twenty- 
eight at a later period, by the addition of Abhijit. If 
this be fully and satisfactorily proved, the Hindu origin 
of the three systems will be hard to deny ; since it must 
appear at least highly improbable that the Arabs and 
Chinese should on their part also, and independently, have 
expanded to twenty-eight an original series of twenty- 
seven. But the proof is wholly insufficient to sustain so 
weighty a conclusion. ‘It is true that in the earlier author- 
ities the prevailing number is twenty-seven; but this is 
equally true also of the later authorities : down to the final 
fixation of the Hindu astronomy in its scientific form under 
Western influence, the nakshatras, for all the practical 
purposes of a series of star-groups determining portions 
of the ecliptic, are and remain but twenty-seven. Only, 
side by side with the recognition of the lesser series there 
is found, sometimes in the same authority, and sometimes 
in others of the same period and character, a recognition 


410 THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 


of the greater as constituting, under certain aspects and 
for certain purposes, the complete system. The position of 
the Stirya-Siddhanta, which acknowledges twenty-eight 
uranographical groups, but only twenty-seven astronomi- 
cal divisions, seems to me typical for the whole literature 
of the subject, earlier and later. And, so far as I can 
discover, there is no time in the whole history of the Indian 
system at which any other nation borrowing it would not 
have been more likely to take it with only twenty-seven 
divisions and determining constellations than with twenty- 
eight. I am far from claiming that there is anything in 
the Sanskrit records to refute the hypothesis of a Hindu 
expansion from the smaller to the greater number ; possi- 
bly, upon Indian ground alone, this hypothesis is rather 
more probable than its opposite; but I do assert, and 
with entire confidence, that it is not forced upon us by 
the facts, as constituting their only acceptable explana- 
tion. The grand reason for believing that the nakshatras 
were originally twenty-eight is that the szew and mandzil 
are so; and, to my apprehension, it is the dominant con- 
sideration, which compels us to explain all apparently 
opposing circumstances in such a manner as to accord 
with it, if we can — and the task, as I have already said, 
is of no particular difficulty. 

As to the reason why Abhijit should have assumed 
this equivocal position as hanger-on to the asterismal 
system, possessing only a half-right to association with 
the other members, we are left entirely to conjecture. 
Perhaps the fact that the moon’s revolution is measured 
more nearly by twenty-seven days than by twenty-eight 
was not without weight in suggesting the reduction. 
Perhaps there was something in the number twenty- 
seven itself which recommended it to the preference of 
the ancient Hindus. And, the reduction being deter- 
mined upon, I should like to guess that Abhijit was se- 
lected for omission because it was so far away from the rest 


THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 411 


of the series, in the north, and would be least missed — 
the asterisms, too, being most crowded together and least 
evenly distributed in this region of the sky. But I do 
not put forward the suggestion with any degree of con- 
fidence. At any rate, we can see clearly enough why 
the twenty-seven-fold division, rather than the other, 
should have been accepted and ratified by use in the 
later period of the scientific astronomy, with its division 
of the circle into degrees and minutes. The twenty-sev- 
enth part of 560° is a convenient fraction in degrees 
(134°), and a whole number in minutes (800’) ; while 
the twenty-eighth part is a wholly unmanageable frag- 
ment in either reckoning. 

On the whole, therefore, I cannot help regarding We- 
ber’s attempt to prove the stew derived from the nak- 
shatras as not less really a failure than Biot’s attempt to 
prove the nakshatras derived from the sieu. 

It ought perhaps to be added that Professor Max Miil- 
ler has also discussed at some length the relations of the 
sieu and the nakshatras, in the Preface to the fourth vol- 
ume of his edition of the Rig-Veda commentary and text ; 
but as his treatment adds nothing whatever, in my opin- 
ion, to our comprehension of the subject, it will be un- 
necessary for us to pay it any detailed attention.1 


1 [ have set forth and criticised Miiller’s reasonings in the Journ. Am. Or. 
Soc. viii. 72 seqg., and will only allow myself here to recapitulate a few points, 
by way of justification of the opinion above expressed. He appeals, at the out- 
set, to the prejudices of his readers to support him in his own persuasion ‘‘ that 
the Brahmans could not have borrowed the idea of the nakshatras from the 
Chinese,’’ asking whether, if they had done so, ‘‘ the national individuality of 
the Aryan race would not be tainted in its core, and the Turanian man rise su- 
perior to his Aryan and Semitic brothers? ’’ He accepts Biot’s history of the 
Chinese system, Cheu-Kong and all; but he tries to avoid Biot’s conclusion by, 
in the first place, questioning whether there is, after all, any connection be- 
tween the siew and the nakshatras (ignoring the mandzil as necessary third 
term in the comparison) ; and, in the second place, professing his willingness 
to ‘surrender the whole system of the Taras and Yogataras’’ (groups and 
junction-stars) ‘‘ as of foreign origin.’’ What would be left in that case to vin- 
dicate the superiority of the Aryan man is not apparent. And he proposes to 
account for the importation of ‘‘ Taras and Yogataras’’ from China into India 


412 THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 


The subject of the relation sustained by the Arab man- 
dézil to the other two systems is a comparatively simple 
one, and we shall need to spend but little time upon it. 
The most important item in the history of the mandzil is 
that they are twice mentioned in the Koran (x. 5, xxxvi. 
39), as an already familiar institution, and are accepted 
and ratified as a part of the existing order of things. 
There are other supporting indications, from the same 
period, that they were practically used in the measure- 
ment of time by the Arabs. In the obscurity that rests 
upon the pre-Islamic conditions of Arabia in general, 


by the fact that a new religion (Buddhism), with its ceremonial and calendar, 
had been exported from India to China! 

Miiller quotes from the Journ. As. Soc. Bengal Archdeacon Pratt’s calcula- 
tion of the date of the Jyotisha (reported above, p. 381), and arrives at a conclu- 
sion respecting it accordant with that which I have expressed; declaring that, 
in deducing chronological dates from such observations, ‘‘a margin of several 
centuries ought to be left on either side.’’ But later, in his Chips (vol. i. p. 
113, Am. edit.), he has retracted this opinion, and returned to the acceptance 
of a definite date; and he also (see above, p. 142) gives the credit of the calcula- 
tion to Main. He further reprints, or reports in full, three characteristic passages 
from Bentley’s Historical View of the Hindu Astronomy (a work vastly more 
accessible than valuable), as ‘‘deserving more attention than they have re- 
ceived.’’? One of these I have briefly commented on above (p. 362); the second is 
equally worthless; and the third so. curious as to be worth a moment’s particu- 
lar notice. Bentley gives an explanation of certain late and unusual names of 
four of the planets, as founded on their successive occultation by the moon in 
the year 1425-24 B. c. He makes the almost incredible blunder of reporting 
the dates in the order April 17th, April 23d, August 19th, 1424, and August 
19th, 1425, and of reckoning them to include sixteen months, instead of just a 
year; and Miiller copies the blunder without noticing it. The explanation is 
wholly unacceptable, even on documentary and general grounds; and moreover, 
Miiller, having moved competent astronomical authorities to test the calculation, 
is informed by them that it is erroneous, only one of the asserted occultations 
having actually occurred: yet he ends with accepting Bentley’s theory, and 
pronouncing the coincidence between the legend quoted (or fabricated) by him 
and the astronomical facts determined by the recalculation a real one! 

I will only add that Miiller suggests ‘twenty-seven poles planted in a circle 
at equal distances round a house’’ as a sufficient apparatus for observation of 
the nakshatras; the place of the sun or moon in the series being determined by 
simply noticing between which pair of poles either luminary rose or set —thus 
reducing the ecliptic to a sort of variable fixed circle, coincident with each ob- 
server’s horizon. And he continues, in the next sentence: “ Our notions of as- 
tronomy cannot be too crude or imperfect, if we wish to understand the first be- 
ginnings in the reckoning of days, and seasons, and years.’’ In my opinion, 
his example, more effectual than his precept, proves the contrary of this. 


THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 413 


there seems no reasonable hope of our ever being able to 
trace them much, if at all, farther back. The possibility 
is, of course, by no means thus excluded that the institu- 
tion may have been one of immemorial antiquity, and 
even that it may have spread from Arabia to the rest of 
Asia ; but it must be, at any rate, impossible to prove this. 
M. Sédillot, to be sure, in his work already referred to 
(above, p. 351, note), is inclined to suggest and urge the 
priority of the mandzil; but it is only by way of escape 
from the difficulties with which the question of origin 
seemed to have been encumbered by the misapprehen- 
sions of Biot and others; and I have no idea that he 
would insist upon his suggested view after the removal of 
those misapprehensions. The unquestionable appearance 
of the nakshatras and sieu as perfected systems many 
centuries before the attested appearance of the mandztl 
seems an absolute bar to any successful claim on behalf 
of the latter as the original of the three. 

But Weber goes much farther, and maintains that the 
system of mandzil as we know it, the historical system of 
the later Arabs, was imported out of India into Arabia. 
His leading grounds are two: first, that the system 
begins with Sharatan, the correspondent of Agvint, which 
heads the modern Hindu series; and second, that astro- 
nomical knowledge is known to have been communicated 
from India to Arabia in the early centuries of Islam, the 
Arab savants of the ninth century even ascribing their 
doctrine of the asterisms to Hindu authorities. 

In the importance which he ascribes to the first reason 
is to be seen Weber’s usual over-estimation of this partic- 
ular element in the history of the asterisms. As I have 
already pointed out, nothing is easier than to shift from 
one member to another the initial point of an annular 
series which has no natural and necessary beginning, with- 
out involving any further change in the system. That 
the mandzil begin in the later period with Sharatan is 


414 THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 


presumably owing to the fact that that asterism was near- 
est to the vernal equinox. If the Arabs learned this from 
the Hindus, then the change was made under Hindu 
influence: which of their other asterisms had been 
counted first before we do not know; but we have no 
reason to doubt that one or other of the series occupied 
the post. 

As regards the second point, we cannot well help 
believing in the letter of the Arab acknowledgment of 
derivation ; the only question is, what and how much is 
meant by it. No one is called upon to credit that the 
great lights of the period of literary and scientific culture 
in Arabia, the oldest of them writing a century or two 
after Mohammed, are entitled to speak with authority as 
to the ultimate origin of an institution whose use dates 
back to primitive times in Arab history. Woepcke, for 
example, in whose learning and critical judgment the 
highest confidence is to be reposed, declared in his last 
communication to the Journal Asiatique (1863, vol. i. 
p. 69), that ‘ unfortunately, historical criticism is wanting 
to such a degree in most Arab writers, that their evidence 
can only be accepted with the greatest reserve, when it 
concerns matters of which they could not have immediate 
and certain knowledge.” What, now, are the facts which 
we have to combine and interpret? First, the Arabs had 
a system of lunar asterisms before the rise of Islam. 
Second, a hundred years and more after Mohammed, in 
the eighth century, it is well established that the Hindu 
astronomical science, as represented to us by the Siddhan- 
tas and known to be not many centuries old at the time, 
was brought to the knowledge of the Arab learned, and 
eagerly accepted by them ; and, in the following century, 
we find them ascribing their doctrine of the asterisms to 
Hindu authorities. We know perfectly well what series 
of asterisms was accepted and would have been taught by 
the Hindus of the Siddhanta period. If, therefore, we 


' 


THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 415 


found the later system of mandézil to agree with this, pre- 
cisely or very closely, we should have a right to conclude 
that the Arabs actually obtained them from India, aban- 
doning or to a certain extent modifying (how far, it 
might never be in our power to determine) their own 
- ancient institution: we could say with confidence that 
the mandzil, as we know them, were derived from the 
nakshatras. But so far is this from being the case that 
the Arab series corresponds with the Hindu in only about 
two thirds of its members, while, in a considerable part 
of the remaining third, it agrees with the series accepted 
in far-off China. Moreover, the Arabs never think of 
counting less than twenty-eight asterisms, while the Hin- 
dus, for the purposes of astronomical and astrological cal- 
culation, almost uniformly acknowledge only twenty- 
seven. From these data it seems to me to result with 
the force of. a demonstration that the later system of 
mandzil is the same with the earlier; that the Arabs did 
not servilely abandon their own time-honored institution 
and put another and a foreign one in its place ; and that, 
when they confess their indebtedness to the Hindus, it is 
for the scientific application of the system, for its astro- 
nomical and astrological uses, which they would naturally 
adopt along with the rest of the scientific astronomy. 
They might truthfully ascribe their doctrine of the mand- 
zil to India, even though at the same time adhering 
strictly to every one of the familiar constellations which 
their fathers had been wont to observe. 

I do not think it quite fair to Colebrooke to quote him 
as deliberately teaching the derivation of the manézil 
from the nakshatras ; and to represent him as having 
** proved” the fact of the derivation! is certainly unjusti- 
fiable. Colebrooke’s first expression on the subject is to 
the following effect. After declaring that he inclines to 
the opinion, contrary to that of Sir William Jones, that 


1 As is done by Lassen in his Ind. Alterthumskunde, second edition, i. 979. 


416 | | THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 


the manézil and nakshatras have a common origin, he 
says (Essays, first edition, 11. 322): “ I apprehend that it 
must have been the Arabs who adopted (with slight vari- 
ations) a division of the zodiac familiar to the Hindus. 
This, at least, seems to be more probable than the sup- 
position, that the Indians received their system from the 
Arabians.” This was written in 1807. Ten years later, 
he seems to have come to hold the opinion with greater 
confidence ; for he says (Ibid. ii. 447) : ‘* They [the Hin- 
dus] had a division of the ecliptic .... seemingly their 
own: it was certainly borrowed by the Arabians ;” but 
neither here nor elsewhere does he show himself to have 
been strengthened in his view by any further and deeper 
investigation of the subject; he simply refers his readers, 
for authority, back to the other passage, quoted just above. 
All that can be truly said, then, is that Colebrooke con- 
ceived a suspicion, which time deepened into a persuasion, 
that the Arab lunar mansions were a copy of those of the 
Hindus. 

What may be the origin of the lunar zodiac of which 
the record is found in the Bundehesh is an open question, 
and to be decided, if at all, along with the more general 
question of the origin and: propagation of the asterismal 
system. The lateness and scantiness of our information 
respecting it puts it necessarily in this doubtful and sub- 
ordinate position. But I cannot pass without a word of 
protest Weber’s setting it down summarily as of Hindu 
origin, upon the sole ground that the series as recorded 
appears to begin with the member corresponding to Ag- 
vini. Besides the entirely dubious bearing of this fact 
in any connection, there is here a special reason why the 
enumeration could not begin otherwise than as it does. 
The document commences with stating the division of 
the zodiac into twelve signs, the Ram, the Bull, and so 
on: these, it goes on to say, are divided, from their begin- 
ning, into twenty-eight portions, of which the names are 


THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 417 


next rehearsed. Evidently, in such a record, the twenty- 
eight-fold division must start from the same point with 
the twelve-fold — that is to say, with Agvini, the, head 
of the Ram. 

- Although Weber holds the known systems of stew and 
mandzu to represent a recent phase of the nakshatras, 
he does not acknowledge the absolute originality of the 
Hindu system, but conjectures that it may have been 
derived ultimately from some outside source, probably 
Babylon. ‘The only tangible piece of evidence which he 
brings up to support the conjecture is the fact that the 
Jyotisha lays down a measure of the respective length 
of day and night when the sun is at either solstice, mak- 
ing them stand to one another as two to three; while 
such a relation, as he points out, is not true of any part 
of India save its extreme northwestern corner, and is, on 
the other hand, very nearly true of Babylon. In an 
additional note to his second essay, he shows that the same 
measure, as nearly as possible, is given also by the 
Chinese. From this striking coincidence he draws, with 
considerable confidence, the conclusion that the datum 
must be one which has passed from Babylon into the 
possession of the other two peoples; and the further 
inference would naturally be that both India and China 
might have received other astronomical data and methods 
from the same quarter — among them, very possibly, the 
system of lunar asterisms. But the argument is evidently, 
I think, too weak to bear any appreciable weight: partly 
because the latitude of Babylon and of that part of 
China in which are situated its centres of civilization is 
nearly the same; and partly because the determination 
is of so rude a character. Were the Hindu and Chi- 
nese measurements given with great exactness, down to a 
minute fraction of a day, and did they then agree closely 
with one another and with what the latitude of Babylon 


demands, there would be ground for a pretty confident 
QT 


418 . THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 


inference ; but such extremely coarse data as are actually 
furnished us are little better than worthless in the dis- 
cussion of difficult and controverted points. 

It will be observed that the conclusions we have thus 
far reached, as regards the origin of the lunar zodiac, are 
almost purely negative. We have only examined and 
found untenable every theory yet proposed respecting the 
derivation of any one of the three forms of the system 
from either of the others. We have done nothing more 
than clear the ground ; the way is left open to any one 
to prove, by good and sufficient evidence, that either the 
Hindus, the Chinese, or the Arabs, or that some fourth 
people, different from them all, may claim the honor of 
being inventors of an institution so widely diffused, and 
forming a cardinal element in the early astronomical 
science of the mest important and cultivated races of 
Asia. This may not be altogether a happy result; but if 
it is the only one that can be fairly reached and success- 
fully held, it is far preferable to a more positive opinion 
founded in error. For myself, I have little faith that 
certainty upon the subject, or even confident persuasion, 
will ever be attained ; the origin of the institution lies 
too far back, and the ways over which it has traveled 
are too dark and unwatched, to permit of our discovering 
its birth-place. I will confess, however, to sharing We- 
ber’s suspicion, that no one of the three later possessors of 
the institution is also its inventor, and that its starting- 
point may have been rather in Mesopotamia, in the seat, 
whatever may have been its precise location, of Chaldean 
wisdom. This is no better than a suspicion, and per- 
haps not even worth finding expression as such. So far, 
however, as the title of the Hindus is concerned, it rises 
to the dignity of a persuasion: and on the following 
grounds. 

In the first place, the appearance of the system in the 
possession of so many other Asiatic nations, and in the 


THE LUNAR ZODIAC. 419 


case of the Chinese, at least, from so early a period, 
makes against the Hindu claim. I would by no means 
assert that these facts positively exclude the hypothesis 
of origination in India ; but only that they are more easily 
explainable by supposing that the institution was first 
devised and applied to use at a central point like Baby- 
lonia, the seat of empire, commerce, and culture which 
are known to have had wide-reaching connections and 
influence in every direction. Hindu propagandism, so 
far as we know, began with Buddhism; and that Bud- 
dhist missions could have made the lunar asterisms an 
accepted and familiar institution in China even as early 
as 200 B. C. is not easily to be believed. 

Of more decisive importance to my mind (though 
perhaps less likely to be found so by others) are consid- 
erations derivable from the character of the Hindus. 
They were not a people of such habits of mind that we 
should expect to see arise among them an institution like 
the lunar zodiac, of so practical a bearing, founded upon 
faithful and persevering observations of the heavenly 
bodies, and intended for chronometrical uses. In the 
Hindus as students of the heavens, as observers of celes- 
tial conditions and phenomena for other than superstitious 
ends, my faith, I must acknowledge, is of the smallest. 
A very important confirmation of this view is to be found 
in their failure to notice the lesser planets until the late 
period already referred to (p. 370). Throughout the 
whole period during which the system of lunar asterisms 
was in full life and vigor, there appears to be no mention 
of any such moving stars to be found in Hindu texts. 
But it is not easily to be credited that a people who had 
so industriously and fruitfully studied the movements of 
the moon amid the stars as to make an original and inde- 
pendent choice of a series of constellations along her track 
for the purpose of marking her daily progress could have 
failed to be struck by those other brilliant orbs which, 


420 : THE LUNAR ZODIAC, 


hike her, went round and round upon almost the same 
track, and to make traceable account of them in the 
astronomical system. It is a perceptibly less difficult 
supposition that they should have borrowed the series 
from some other nation, and have applied it to the only 
practical uses for which they felt its need — even giving 
it, in connection with those uses, a fuller development 
and greater prominence than it elsewhere received — 
without taking any particular notice of the other planets. 
I may add that the acuteness and good sense which could 
give birth to the system as at first established are hardly 
reconcilable with the perversity which should permit the 
substitution, in place of the primitive asterisms, of groups 
like Antares, the Lyre, the Eagle, the Dolphin, lying so 
far away from the moon’s track. I am unwilling to be- 
lieve that those who originated the system could later 
compel it to endure such a disfiguration. 

This is the array of probabilities upon which I chiefly 
base my persuasion that the Hindus did not, after all, 
produce the primitive system of lunar asterisms repre- 
sented to us by the nakshatras, the manézil, and the sieu.} 
That it is not very formidable, I freely admit; it is not 
of a character to compel belief: and*I have no right to 
impugn either the candor or the good sense of any one 
who shall refuse to be won over by it to a like persua- 
sion with mine. I only maintain that it is sufficient to 
prevent us from asserting with confidence and dogma- 
tism the derivation from India, either directly or indi- 
rectly, of the stew and mandzil, and to lead us to look with 

1 For Weber’s statement of the considerations which have moved him to a 
like opinion, see his essays on the Nakshatras, often already referred to. I 
have criticised them briefly in Journ. Am. Or. Soc. viii. 61 seg. Any one desirous 
of following up the discussion more fully should consult Weber’s replies to my 
criticisms in the ninth and tenth volumes of his Jndische Studien (ix. 424-459 and 
x. 213-253). In this general réswmé of the subject, I have avoided any full report 
of the pros and cons upon many points; but I have written in view of all that 


Weber has anywhere urged against my opinions and arguments, and with the 
intent not to repeat aught that had been overthrown or shaken by him. 


THE LUNAR ZODIAC. — 421 


expectation rather than with incredulity for the appearance 
of evidence which shall show some central or western Asi- 
atic people to have been the inventors of the lunar zodiac. 


The stellar chart here appended is (as was mentioned above, p. 
351, note) a reproduction, with some modifications and additions, of 
one published in the ‘‘ Journal of the American Oriental Society ”’ 
(vol. vi., 1860). Its form is that of a plane projection, having the 
ecliptic as its central line. As only‘the zone of the heavens which 
borders the ecliptic is represented, the distances and configurations 
of the stars are altered and distorted by this projection only to a very 
slight degree, not enough to be of any account in a merely illustra- 
tive chart. As a general rule, I have laid down all the stars of the 
first four magnitudes which are situated near the ecliptic, or in that 
part of the heavens through which the line of asterisms passes; stars 
of the fourth to fifth magnitude are also in many cases added; smaller 
ones, only when they enter into the groups of the three systems, or 
when there were other special reasons for introducing them. The 
positions are in all cases taken from Flamsteed’s ‘‘ Catalogus Britan- 
nicus,” and the magnitudes are also for the most part from the same 
authority. I have endeavored so to mark the members of the three 
different series that these may be readily traced across the chart: the 
names of the nakshatras are given in full, and the stars composing 
them are joined together by lines; the mandzil are numbered, and 
their stars joined by dotted lines; for the stew, only the principal or 
determinant star as defined by Biot is marked, and with a number 
inclosed in a circle; the group composing each stew may then be 
traced out by the description given above (pp. 351-356). I have, for 
the sake of easier identification, numbered all the series accordantly, 
beginning with the Pleiades, because that station is uniformly reck- 
oned as the first in the oldest Hindu documents; in the later Hindu 
astronomy, as in the Arabic, the first member is in the head of Aries 
(our No. 27); as for the Chinese series, it has no acknowledged first 
member; Weber, Biot, Williams, and Sédillot set each a different 
asterism at the head. Two equators are drawn: that of A. p. 560, 
the epoch of the modern science in India; and that of B. c. 2350, 
which Biot vainly asserts to have determined the selection of the 
sieu. 


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a . aT it { 
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tet 2 ap : 3 ve | The numbers and names af the Hindu asterisms are gon fill:as 8 Masha ; 
2 H 
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22 Cravisht SER p ¢ 
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: i: si =. jes : = 7Aclesha Paso 3 5%0 * 
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‘ 


INDEX. 


cae 


a (in far), openest vowel, 205-207, 282; 
@ in ask, chance, pass, etc., 206,207; 
‘* short a,’’ so-called, 208; ‘‘ long a,’’ 
so-called, 210. 

a@ (‘short 0,’’ so-called, of what, not), 
213, 214. 

A (‘‘ broad a,”’ of all), 214, 215. 

a or an before initial h, 171, 172, 271; 
before one, 172. 

accent, its general character, 318; va- 
riety of its expression, 319; word- 
accent and sentence-accent, 319, 320; 
word-accent in Greek, Latin, and 
Sanskrit, 321-330; partial notice of 
sentence-accent in do., 331-335; re- 
lation of accent to verse in Greek 
and Sanskrit, 332; place of accented 
syllable, 335-338; freedom of place 
of Sanskrit accent, 336, 337; its 
probable primitiveness and value, 
337, 338, 340; attempts to explain 
it, 338-340. 

accent in Sanskrit, see Sanskrit ac- 
cent. 

Achilleus, 157, 159, 160. 

acute accent, 320, 323, 325 n.; called 
uddatta in Sanskrit, 323. 

@ (‘‘short a’ of fat), 208. 

Zz (a of care, etc.), 208, 209. 

Afghan invasions and domination of 
India, 12-15, 23. 

ahané and dahand, 160. 

ai (“‘long t,’”’ so-called, of aisle, isle), 
225-227. 

Ai (English ot-sound), 227, 228. 

Akbar the Great, his rule in India, 
16-18. 

al-Birfini’s identification of the nak- 
shatras, 406. 


Alford’s Queen’s English reviewed, 
166-180. 

alms, 189. 

alphabet, English spoken, see English 
pronunciation; English written, see 
English orthography. 

alphabet, Indo-European, its historic 
development, 298-300. 

alphabet, spoken, necessity of orderly 
arrangement of, 279; arrangement as 
a single system, 280-286; arrange- 
ment of English spoken alphabet, 
272. 

alphabetic writing, its history, 193- 
195. 

an or a before initial 4, 171, 172, 271; 
before one, 172. 

anudatta, grave accent, 324. 

Arab lunar year, 344. 

Arab lunar zodiac, described and com- 
pared with Hindu and Chinese, 351- 
358; question of its origin, 412-416. 

Arab travelers in China, 102, 105. 

Argynnis, 159, 160. — 

articulate character of human speech, 
on what dependent, 295. 

Aryan invasion and conquest of India, 
5-7; its results, 7-9. 

aspirate mutes, 257; derivation of spir- 
ants from them, 257; question of 
aspirate character of English mutes, 
242, 243. 

asterisms, lunar, see lunar zodiac. 

astronomy, interest of its beginnings, 
341; observations leading to its in- 
itiation, 342-346; its transmission, 
347, 400: —see also Hindu astron- 
omy, lunar zodiac. 

au (English ou-sound), 225, 227. 


424 


6, sonant labial mute, 246, 249. 
Baber’s conquest of India, 15; Mogul 
empire of his descendants, 16-23. 
Bapii-Deva’s astronomical works, 366 
n.; his dependence on Colebrooke 
for identification of nakshatras, 406, 

407.n. . 

been, 212. 

Bell (A. M.), his Visible Speech re- 
viewed, 301-317; publication and 
testing of his system, 302, 303, 312, 
313; its claims, 304; its consonant 
and vowel signs described and criti- 
cised, 304-309; its view of the sylla- 
ble, 310, 311; its merits and sphere 
of usefulness, 312-317 ; Bell’s views 
quoted or referred to, 204 n., 211, 
244, 259, 261, 268, 289, 290. 

Benfey’s definition of the principle of 
Sanskrit accent, 339, 340. 

Bentley on points in Hindu astronomy, 
362, 412 n. 

bh, pure labial spirant, 283. 

Biot on Chinese astronomy, 351, 352 
n., 393 n., 406 n.; his views of his- 
tory of Chinese lunar zodiae ex- 
plained and refuted, 385-397. 

Bohtlingk on Sanskrit accent, 321, 
325. 

Bopp on Sanskrit accent, 338, 339. 

Briséis, 159, 160. 

British in India, history of their do- 
minion, 1-51; their first appearance 
in the country, 25; growth of their 
power, 26-30; their supremacy, 31; 
further conquests and annexations, 


381; reasons of their advance, 32-34; - 


question of its justifiableness, 33-38; 
what the British have done and are 
doing for India, 38, 39, 47-51; feel- 
ing of the subject peoples, 40; the 
sepoy army and its mutiny, 41-46; 
consequences of this, 47-49. 

Briicke’s views in phonology quoted 
and discussed, 211, 250, 288, 289; 
his scheme of phonetic transcription, 
312. 

Buddhism in India, 9; its introduction 
into China and influence there, 80, 
94-100. 


INDEX. 


Bundehesh, its lunar zodiac, 359; 
question of origin of latter, 416, 417. 

Burgess, his contribution to translation 
of Sirya-Siddhanta, 366 n., 406. 


calendar, its establishment -the begin- 
ning of astronomical science, 342- 
345. 

castes, Indian, origin of, 6. 

catch, 209. 

cerebral or cacuminal ¢, 244; do. sibi- 
lant of Sanskrit, 261; do. J, 238. 

ch (of church), compound consonant, 
263-265 ; its origin from ty, 264. 

checks, or mute letters, 241. 

China, treaty of 1858 with, 52; claims 
of China upon our regard, 53-57; its 
wonderful stability, 54, 55; danger 
from Western influence, 56, 57; po- 
sition and influence of Confucius, 
57-63, 76-79; classical literature, 61- 
63; origin of Chinese, 63; earliest 
history, 64, 65; ethnological connec- 
tions, 65; language, 66; writing, 66, 
67; religion, 67-70; political sys- 
tem, 70-75; literary examinations, 
73; history since Confucius, 79-85; 
Mongol dominion, 82; Manchu do- 
minion, 83-85; present prospects of 
the empire, 85; Chinese character, 
86-89 : — influence on other parts of 
Asia, 91, 92; commercial intercourse 
with the West, 92; introduction, 
spread, and influence of Buddhism, 
94-100; of Nestorian Christianity, 
100-108; of Mohammedanism, 102, 
103, 105; visits of Western travel- 
ers, 104-106; early Catholic mis- 
sions, 106; failure and extinction of 
Christianity, 107; renewal of inter- 
course with Europe, 108; tolerant 
policy of the empire, and its gradual 
abandonment, 109-113, 120; later 
Christian or Jesuit missions, 113- 
122; Protestant missions, 123-125. 

Chinese lunar zodiac, described and 
compared with Arab and Hindu, 
351-358; Biot’s views of its history 
explained and refuted, 385-397; 
question of its originality, 396, 397. 


i ie 


INDEX. 


Chinese orthographic principle in Eng- 
lish spelling, 183, 184. 

Chips, M. Muller’s, reviewed, 126-148. 

Christianity, history of attempts to es- 
tablish it in China, 100-125; Nes- 
torian missions, 100-108; early Eu- 
ropean missions, 106; extinction of 
Christianity in China, 107; later 
Catholic or Jesuit missions, 113-122; 
Protestant missions, 123-125. 

Chu-hi, Chinese philosopher, 82. 

circle, origin of our division of, 347. 

circumflex “accent, 321; is Sanskrit 
svarita, 324, 325; its occurrence in 
Sanskrit, 325-330; independent cir- 
cumflex, 325-328; enclitic, 328, 329. 

Colebrooke’s views as to origin of 
Hindu astronomy, 370; as to date 
derivable from Jyotisha, 381, 382; 
his identification of the nakshatras, 
406, 407 n.; opinion as to relation of 
Arabic to Hindu lunar zodiac, 415, 
416. 

Confucius, his life, works, and influ- 
ence, 57-63, 76-79. 

conjunctions of planets and asterisms 
in Hindu astronomy, 373-375. 

consonant and vowel, their relation 
discussed, 279-300; intermediate 
sounds, 280, 281; principle of their 
distinction, 281; series leading 
through both classes, 282-284; vari- 
ous definitions of consonants, 287- 
290 ; meaning of name, 290 ; syllabic 
effect dependent on antithesis of 
consonant and vowel, 293-297; rela- 
tive frequency of consonants and 
vowels in English and other lan- 
guages, 275. 

could, 189. 

count, 189. 

Cox’s Aryan Mythology reviewed, 
149-165. 


d, sonant lingual mute, 246, 249. 

dahand and ahand, 160. 

Davis’s calculation of date from Jyo- 
tisha datum, 381. | 

day, natural division of time, 342. 

deaf, 209. 


425 


degrees of circle, their origin, 347. 

Delbriick on Sanskrit verbal accent, 
335 n. 

dental ¢, 244. . 

dentilabial spirants (f, v), 255-257. 

dentilingual spirants (th, dh), 254, 255. 

dh-sound (of then), 254, 255. 

dialectic utterance of English, 202%, 
203 ; the author’s analyzed and de- 
scribed, 205-276. 

diphthongs, English, 225-228. 

dis-, 260. 

does, 217, 224, 

doubt, 189. 

Dravidian aborigines of India, 4, 5; 
their Aryan civilization, 7. 


é (of met), or ‘short e,’? 209; é@(“long 
a,’’ so-called), 210; ‘‘long e,’’ so- 
called, 212. 

a (‘short w,’’ so-called, of but), 222- 
224; its appearance in English un- 
accented syllables, 228-233; as 
glide, before 7, 237. 

ax (vowel of burn, etc.), 224, 237, 238. 

ease of utterance, tendency to it, in 
what way active in phonetic change, 
298-300; easier and harder utter- 
ance, how to be understood, 299. 

East India Company, its beginning in 
India, 25; progress of its dominion, 
26-31; its abolition, 49. 

Egypt, traces of lunar zodiac in, 359. 

Egyptian writing, 193, 194. 

either, neither, 226. 

Ellis’s services to phonology, 204n. ; 
his ‘‘ Paleotype’’ and its signs for 
English sounds, 208, 214n., 215, 
224, 249 n., 254, 258 n., 263; his dis- 
cussion of the pronunciation of unac- 
cented syllables, 282 n.; of pure 
labial f and v, 256 n. ; of accent and 
emphasis, 318 n.; view of Greek and 
Sanskrit accent, 325 n.; further 
quoted or referred to, 203 n., 225, 
236, 244, 259, 268, 269 n., 302, 311. 

English orthography, character and 
value of, discussed, 181-201; spora- 
dic efforts toward changing it, 181, 
182; its discrimination of homonyms, 


426 


183, 184; its historic method, 185- 
190; question of the value of this to 
etymology, 185-188 ; to philological 
training, 188-190; its real value, 
190; disingenuousness of ordinary 
pleas for present spelling, 191, 192; 
orthographic purism, 192; reasons 
fora change, 193-199; true ideal of a 
mode of writing, as shown by his- 
tory of alphabet, 193-195; practical 
bearings of the case, 196-199; desi- 

_ rableness of phonetic spelling, 199 ; 
difficulties in the way of it, 199-201. 

English pronunciation, its elements 
analyzed, described, and classed, 
202-271; their arrangement in phys- 
ical scheme, 272; determination 
of the average frequency of each, 
272-276; average number of sylla- 
bles in a word, and of sounds in a 
word and in a syllable, 275; general 
process of utterance, 205; English 
vowel sounds, 205-224; diphthongs, 
225-228; vowel sounds in unaccented 
syllables and words, 228-233; conso- 
nantal vowels, 233, 234; semivowels, 
234-241; mutes, 241-249; nasals, 
249-252, 265; relation of mute and 
semivowel, 252; fricatives, 253-265; 
spirants, 253-257; sibilants, 257- 
263 ; compound, 263-265; aspiration, 
265-271. 

ex-, 260. 

explosives, or mutes, 242; explosion 
as element of sonant mutes, 248, 
249 ; of nasals, 250, 286. 


Jf, surd labial (or dentilabial) spirant, 
255; pure labial f (bh), 256. 

flattening of a-sound, 206, 207, 227; 
‘flat a,’’ so-called, 208. 

Forstemann on percentage of sounds in 
various languages, 206 n. 

French accent, 320 n. 

French settlements and efforts at do- 
minion in India, 26, 28. 

fricatives, English, 253-265; spirants, 
253-257 ; sibilants, 257-265. 


g, sonant palatal mute, 246, 249. 


INDEX. 


gape, 207. - 

Gaubil on Chinese siew, 394. 

gh, treatment of, in later English, 257. 

Ghazna, invasions of India from, 11, 
12. 

grave accent of Greek, 333. 

grave tone, Sanskrit anuddtta, 324, 325. 

Greek accent, 320, 321, 325, 331, 332, 
335. 

Greek astronomy, source of Hindu, 

- 870-372. 

Greek writing, 194. 

guttural consonants, 245. 


h, pure aspiration, 265; various forms 
of aspiration included under this let- 
ter, 266, 267 ; its place in alphabetic 
system, 268-270, 286 ; question as to 
character of wh and hy sounds, 268- 
270; @ or an before h, 271. 

Hadley’s views on accent, 321 n., 
329 n., 333n., 336; his contribution 
to translation of Sarya-Siddhanta, 
366 n. 

Haug’s Aitareya-Brahmana, Miiller’s 
notice of, 188-141; his views of San- 
skrit accent, 330 n., 332. 

Helen (of Troy), 157, 159, 160. 

Hindu astronomy, its text-books, 365; 
its basis of periods and recurring 
conjunctions, 366-368 ; its methods, 
368 ; age and origin, 368-372 ; treat- 
ment of lunar zodiac, 372-375; sole 
recorded observations, 376 ; question 
of their date, 376-379; other stars 
observed, 374, 379, 880; question of 
capacity of Hindus as astronomers, 
419, 420. 

Hindu lunar zodiac described and 
compared with Arab and Chinese, 
351-358 ; Weber’s information from 
the oldest literature respecting it, 
359 seq. ; months named by it, 360; 
question of date and reason of no- 
menclature, 360-364; the lunar zo- 
diac in the Jyotisha, 364; in the 
Siddhantas, 372-374 ; junction-stars 
of the asterisms, their defined posi- 
tions, and errors of the latter, 374— 
3879; use made of them in deter- 


INDEX. 


mining date of Jyotisha, 380-384 ; 


Weber’s views as to character and. 


history of the system examined, 398- 
411; question of variation of names 
and numbers, 399-403, 408 ; constel- 
lations and myths about them, 404, 
405, 408 ; ignorance of later astron- 
omers about them, 406, 407; rela- 
tion of numbers 27 and 28, 409-411; 
question of originality of the Hindu 
system, 417-421. 

historic principle in English orthogra- 
phy, 185-195. 

homage, 270. 

humble, 270. 

humor, 270. 

hy-sound (of hue, etc.), question of 
analysis and description of, 268- 
270. 


t (of pit), or **short 7,’’ 210, 211; 7 
(‘‘long e,’’ so-called), 212; ‘‘ long z,”’ 
so-called, 225-227; relation of 7 and 
y, 239, 240. 

I or me as predicate, 172, 173. 

Ibn Batuta’s travels in China, 105, 106. 

én and into, 176, 177. 

India, history of British dominion in, 
.1-51; ancient and modern impor- 
tance of India, 2, 3; aboriginal 
population, 4; Aryan conquest, 5-7; 
later history, 8, 9; Buddhism, 9; 
Mohammedan conquest and domin- 
ion, 9-23; Ghaznevid conquest, 11, 
12; Afghan dynasties, 12, 13, 15; 
Mongol invasions, 13, 14; Mogul 
dynasty of Baber and his descend- 
ants, 15-23; rise and supremacy of 
Mahrattas, 18-23; Persian and last 
Afghan invasion, 22, 23; condition 
of the country, 24; entrance of 
Europeans, 25, 26 ; growth of British 
power, 26-31; question of its justi- 
fication, 32-38; results of British 
dominion, 38-40, 47-51; the sepoy 
army and its mutiny, 41-46. 

Indo-European alphabet and its devel- 
opment, 298-300. 

into and in, 176, 177. 

island, 189. 


427 


isolate, 226. 
its, 170. 


J (of judge), compound consonant, 265. 

Jesuit missions in China, history of, 
113-122. 

Jones (Sir W.), on Hindu month names, 
3862; his calculation of date from 
Jyotisha datum, 880; comparison of 
the Hindu and Arab lunar zodiacs, 
406, 415. 

junction-stars of Hindu asterisms, 374, 
375; definition of their positions, 
376, 3877; question of date of obser- 
vation, 378, 379. 

Jyotisha, its character, 364, 384; its 
datum as to position of solstices, 365; 
attempts to derive a date from this, 
380-384; their: failure, 384; infer- 
ences from its measurement of length 
of day, 417. 


k, surd palatal mute, 244, 245; its dif- 
ferent qualities, 245. 

King, the, canonical literature of China, 
61, 63. 

Kuhn on comparative mythology, 151. 


1, lingual semivowel, 238, 239; palatal 
and cerebral /’s, 238; near kindred 
of 7 with vowels, 284, 285; /-vowel 
in unaccented syllables, 234. 

labial series of vowels and consonants, 
283; labial vowels, 213-222; semi- 
vowels, 239, 240, 241, 252; mutes, 
243, 249; nasal, 250, 251; spirants, 
255-257, 283; proportional frequency 
of labial sounds in English, 276. 

language, its influence in development 
of religion and mythology, 133-136, 
155. 

Lao-tse, his work and influence in 
China, 60, 61. 

Lassen on Hindu astronomy, 384 n., 
415 n. 

Latin accent, 320, 321, 335. 

Latin writing, 195. 

laws and their authority in language, 
178. 

leisure, 210. 


428 


Lepsius, his signs for alphabetic, 
sounds, 208, 224, 249 n., 254, 258 n., 
263; his alphabetic system, 253, 316; 
his opinion on aspiration of English 
mutes, 242; on vowel and conso- 
nant, 289 n. 

lesser, 175. 

lingual series of vowels and consonants, 
284, 285; lingual consonantal vowels, 
233, 2384; semivowels, 234-239 ; 
mutes, 243, 244, 249; nasal, 251; 
spirants, 253-255; sibilants, 258-261; 
proportional frequency of lingual 
sounds in English, 276; influence of 
linguals on pronunciation of follow- 
ing ad, 219-222. 

liquids, so called, 240. 

lunar year, 344. 

lunar zodiac, character and history of, 
341-421; where found, 341, 347, 348, 
359; conditions determining its char- 
acter, 348-350; description and com- 
parison of Arab, Chinese, and Hindu 
forms of it, 851-356; table of prob- 
able original and later deviations, 
357, 358; traces in Persia, Egypt, 


and possibly Palestine, 359; first ap-_ 


pearance in India, 359, 360; deriva- 
tion of month names from it, 360, 361; 
question of time of this, 362-364; 
appearance in Jyotisha, 364; in later 
Hindu astronomy, 372-379; question 
of date derivable from J yotisha, 380- 
384; Biot’s views as to histcry of 
Chinese system examined, 385-397; 
Weber’s views as to Hindu system 
examined, 398-411; Miiller’s views 
as to Hindu system examined, 411 n.; 
relation of numbers 27 and 28, 409- 
411; question of ultimate original, 
417-421; general negative result 
reached, 418. 


m, labial nasal, 250, 251; as vowel, 
251. 

Mahmud of Ghazna, his invasion of 
India, 11, 12. 

Mahrattas, 13; their rise to power in 
India, 18, 19; character of their do- 
minion, 20; their supremacy, 21, 22; 


INDEX. 


great defeat by Afghans, 23; sub- 
jection by British, 29, 30. 

Manchu conquest and dominion of 
China, 83-85, 116. 

manzil (pl. manazil), Arab lunar aster- 
ism, 348. 

Marco Polo’s travels in China, 104, 105. 

me or J as predicate, 172, 173. 

Mencius, Chinese philosopher, 79. 

microscope, 226, 227. 

Mogul empire of Baber and his succes- 
sors in India, 15-23. 

Mohammedan conquest and dominion 
in India, 9-23; its results, 24, 33. 

Mohammedans in China, 102. 

Mongol invasions of India, 13, 14; con- 
quest and dominion of China, 82, 
106, 107. 

monotheism and polytheism, relation 
of, 131-135, 155. 

month, as natural division of time, 
342; its adjustment with year, 343, 
344; Hindu months named from as- 
terisms, 360-364. 

moon, as measurer of time, 342; char- 
acter of her movements, as determin- 
ing that of lunar zodiac, 348, 349. 

Moon’s Dean’s English, 179. 

Muir on Vedic mythology, 165. 

Miller, his Chips reviewed, 126-148; 
his views as to a science of religion, 
127-132; as to the influence of lan- 
guage on religion and mythology, 
133-136; notice of Haug’s Aitareya 
Brahmana, 138-143; lectures on the 
science of religion, 144-148; con- 
tributions to study of comparative 
mythology, 154-157; their continua- 
tion by Cox, 158-165; Miiller ex- 
explained as a solar myth, 164; his 
advocacy of phonetic spelling, 185; 
figures of alphabetic utterance, 204 
n., 259, 261; definition of conso- 
nants, 287, 288; views on Hindu 
lunar zodiac, 411. 

mutes or contact letters, 241-249; dis- 

' tinction of surd and sonant, 245, 246; 
question of aspiration of English 
mutes, 242; relation to semivowels, 
252. 


INDEX. 


mutiny of British native army in India, 
1, 2, 42-48. ; 

mythology, relation of language .to, 
135, 136, 155; comparative myth- 
ology, 149-154; value to it of San- 
skrit and Vedic myths, 6, 150, 151; 
its relation to study of Greek myths, 
152, 153; Miiller’s contributions to 
the study, 154-157; their continua- 
tion by Cox, 158-165. 

Mythology of the Aryan Nations, 
Cox’s, reviewed, 149-165. 


m, lingual nasal, 251; n-vowel in un- 
accented syllables, 233, 234. 

naked, 209. 

nakshatras, 348, 400: see Hindu lunar 
zodiac. 

nasal mutes, 249-252; value of the ex- 
plosive element in them, 250, 286; 
called by Briicke ‘‘ resonants,’’ 250, 
288; position in alphabetic system, 
285, 286. 

neither, either, 226. 

nephew, 256. 

Nestorian Christian missions in China, 
100-108. 

neutral vowels (in but, burn), 222-224; 
their substitution for other vowels in 
unaccented syllables, 228-233; rela- 
tions to r, 237, 238. 

Newton (Professor H. A.), his con- 
tributions to translation of Strya- 
Siddhanta, 366 n. 

ng, palatal nasal, 251. 


o (‘long o’’), 216; true short 6in New 
England pronunciation, 215, 216 ; 
‘short 0,’’ so-called (in not, what), 
213, 214. 

oi-diphthong, 227, 228. 

on and onto, 176, 177. 

one, 172. 

-or or -ovr in honor, etc., 174, 181, 
189, 192. 

Ormulum, its orthography, 186. 

orthography, English, see English or- 
thography. 


p, surd labial mute, 243. 


429 


Palexotype, Ellis’s, 208; its signs for 
English sounds, 208 seq. 

palatal series of vowels and conso- 
nants, 282; palatal vowels, 207-212; 
semivowel, 239, 240, 252; mutes, 
241, 244, 249; nasal, 251; spirant, 
257, 267, 282; sibilants, 261-265; 
proportional frequency of palatals 
in English, 276. 

Panini, Sanskrit grammarian, on ac- 
cent, 321, 324, 326. 

Paris, 159, 160. 

percentages of English sounds in con- 
nected use, 272-276. 

periods, fundamental, of Hindu chro- 
nology and astronomy, 366. 

Persia, traces of lunar zodiac in, 359; 
question of its derivation, 416, 417. 

Persian invasion of India, 22. 

ph, pure labial spirant, 283. 

Phenician writing, 194. 

phonetic spelling of English, 174; its 
desirability discussed, 181-201. 

phonology, phonetic science, 277-279. 

Phoroneus, 159, 160. 

plague, 209. 

planets, lesser, not noticed in ancient 
India, 370, 419; their conjunctions 
with one another and with asterisms 
in later astronomy, 373-375. 

plant, 207. 

polytheism and monotheism, relation 
of, 181-135, 155. 

Portuguese settlements in India, 25, 
26; in China, 108, 109. 

position, quantity by, 332. 

possess, 261. 

pracita accent in Sanskrit, 330. 

Praticakhyas, their teachings on ac- 
cent, 321-324, 328-330. 

Pratt, Archdeacon, his calculation of 
date from Jyotisha datum, 142, 143, 
381. 

precession of equinoxes, in Hindu as- 
tronomy, 369, 374 n. 

pretty, 238. 

priest, 189. 

primary and wide vowels, Bell’s dis- 
tinction of, 211, 307, 308, 310. 

Protestant missions in China, 123-125. 


430 


quantity, in English vowels, 207; de- 
termining element in Greek and 
Sanskrit verse, 332. 

Queen’s English, Alford’s, reviewed, 
166-180. 


r, lingual semivowel, 234-239 ; question 
of its trilling or vibration, 235; of 
distinction of rough and smooth r 
in English, 236; dialectic non-utter- 
ance except before vowel, 236; neu- 
tral vowel as glide to it (in care, 
etc. ), 237; long neutral vowel before 
it (in earn, etc.), 224, 237, 238; near 
kindred with vowels and use as 
vowel, 238-240, 284, 285; pronuncia- 
tion of @ after it, 219, 220; influence 
on a, 206; relation to s, 259, 260. 

reliable, 173, 174. 

religion, science of, its possibility dis- 
cussed, 128, 129; its necessary basis, 
129-132, 145, 146; influence of lan- 
guage on religion, 133, 134; classifi- 
cation of religions, 146, 147; spirit 
of study, 147. 

Renan’s views on Semitic religions, 
131, 133-135. 

resonant, name for nasal mute, 250. 

root, 217. 

Roth on Sanskrit accent, 322; on com- 
parative mythology, 151. 


s, surd dental sibilant, 257-259; dis- 
tinction between it and sh, 258; dif- 
ferent ways of forming English s, 
258, 259, 306; relation to r, 259, 
260. 

Sanskrit accent, sources of our knowl- 
edge of, 320-322; their trustworthi- 
ness, 322, 823; names of accent and 
accents, 325; the three tones or ac- 
cents, 323-325; identity with Greek 
accents, 325; occurrence of circum- 
flex, 825-329; enclitic circumflex, 
328, 329; mode of denoting accent, 
330; pracita accent, 330; toneless 
words, 333; accent of vocative, 333, 
334; of verb, 334, 335; place of ac- 
cented syllable in word, 335-338; 
its character and possible value, 337, 


INDEX. 


338, 340; attempts to define its prin- 
ciple, 338-340. 

Sédillot, on oriental astronomy, 351 n., 
352 n., 353 n.; on Chinese lunar zo- 
diac, 394; on originality of Arab 
lunar zodiac, 413. 

Semitic language, its influence on 
Semitic religion, 133, 134. 

semivowels, name and character, 239, — 
240, 284, 285; English semivowels, 
234-241; relation to mutes, 252. 

sentence-accent or emphasis, 319, 320; 
generally neglected in marking ac- 
cent, 331-333. 

sh, surd palatal sibilant, 261-263; dif- 
ferent ways of forming it in English, 
261, 306; origin from sy, 262. 

sibilants, sub-class of fricatives, 257- 
265; proportional frequency of sibi- 
lant sounds, 265, 276. 

stew, Chinese asterisms, 348: see Chi- 
nese lunar zodiac. 

Si-ngan-fu, Nestorian monument of, 
101, 102. 

snake, 209. 

sonant and surd letters, distinction of, 
245-248; their average relative fre- 
quency in English, 276. 

sovereign, 188. 

spelling of English, see English or- 
thography. 

spirants, sub-class of fricatives, 253- 
257. 

such, 190. 

sun’s movement, its relation to year, 
345; zodiac founded on it, 346. 

surd and sonant letters, see sonant. 

Sarya-Siddhanta, 366 ; its edition and 
translation, 351 n., 366 n. ; its treat- 
ment of the lunar zodiac, 372-375. 

svarita, Sanskrit circumflex accent, 
324. ; 

syllable, definition and description of, 
291-296; difficulty of syllabie divis- 
ion, 295, 296; average number of syl- 
lables in English words, 275. 


t, surd lingual mute, 243, 244; its dif- 
ferent forms, 243, 244, 
Tamerlane’s invasion of India, 14. 


INDEX. 


th (of thin), surd lingual (dentilingual) 
spirant, 253, 254, 305, 306. 

than, 172. 

Tibetan orthographic principle in Eng- 
lish spelling, 186-188. 

time, natural divisions of, 342; their 
adjustment and explanation initiate 
astronomical science, 343-345. 

tone or pitch, as element in accent, 
319, 320, 323-325, 331. 

trough, 257. 2 


ti (in full), true short w, 216, 217; long 
u, pure (in rude, food), 217-222 ; 
“long @,’’ so-called (yi), 218-222 ; 
rules for d or ya in author’s dialect, 
218-222; ‘short w,’’ so-called (in 
but), 222-224; relation of w and w, 
239, 240. 
udatta, Sanskrit acute accent, 323. 
unaccented syllables and words, Eng- 
lish, modification of vowel sound in, 
228-233. 
utterance, general process of, 205. 


v, sonant labial (or dentilabial) spirant, 
255, 256; pure labial v, 256; erro- 
neous treatment of v as semivowel, 
241. 

verb, accent of, in Sanskrit, 334, 335. 

verse, its relation to quantity and ac- 
cent in Greek and Sanskrit, 332. 

Visible Speech, see Bell. 

vocative, accent of, in Sanskrit, 333, 
334. 

vowel and consonant, see consonant 
and vowel. 

vowels, systematic arrangement of, 
279, 280; Bell’s arrangement, 307, 
308. 


vowels, English, analysis and descrip-: 


tion of, 205-284; simple vowels, 
205-224; diphthongs, 225-228; vow- 
els as modified in unaccented syl- 
lables, 228-233; 2 and / vowels, 233, 
234. 


431 


w, labial semivowel, 239-241, 256; its 
relation to w, 239, 240; its influence 
on the a-sound, 214, 215; question 
of surd w (wh), 268-270. 

Weber’s defense against Miiller’s at- 
tack, 140; his studies on the Hindu 
lunar zodiac, 359 n., 360 n., 397; his 
views of its history examined, 397- 
411, 417, 420 n.; his views of deri- 
vation of Arab and Persian systems 
from India, 413-415, 416; further 
quoted or referred to, 362, 364, 370, 
396. 

Webster, Noah, his orthographic inno- 
vations, 181, 199. 

week, question of its origin, 342; 
names of its days, 371; week in 
India, 3871 n. 

wh, question of analysis and descrip~ 
tion of, 268-270. 

which, 190. 

whispering utterance, 248. 

wide and primary vowels, Bell’s dis- 
tinction of, 211, 307, 308, 310. 

Williams on Chinese lunar zodiac, 
351 n., 352 n., 353 n., 394, 395. 

women, 189. 

wound, 218. 

writing, sketch of its history, 193-195. 


y, palatal semivowel, 239, 240; its re- 
lation to 7, 239, 240; question of 
surd y (in hwe, etc.), 268-270; pre- 
fixion of y to @ in ‘‘long w,’’ so- 
called, 218-222; its insertion after 
k and g, 252. 

year, as natural division of time, 342, 
343; its various construction and 
division, 543, 3844; quest of its 
causes, 345. 


z, sonant dental sibilant, 258, 259, 260. 

zh (of azure, fusion), sonant palatal 
sibilant, 263-265; origin from zy, 
265. 

zodiac, solar, 346; lunar, see lunar 
zodiac. 


LIST OF PLACES AND DATES 


OF THE ORIGINAL PUBLICATION OF THE PAPERS COMPRISED 


IN THIS VOLUME. 


fh 
Page 
I. THe BririsH 1n InpIA P 2 : - 7 : 1 
[New Englander, vol. xvi., 1858.] 
II. CHINA AND THE CHINESE . : ; - : rt 
[New Englander, vol. xvii., 1859.] 
III. Co1na AND THE WEST. ; 7 > ; 4 Sy Gh 
[New Englander, vol. xix., 1861. ] 
IV. Muier’s Cuips FROM A GERMAN WORKSHOP . } 126 
[North American Review, vol. cix., 1869, etc.: see Preface. 1 
V. Cox’s Aryan MytHoLoGy . 3 . : : . 149 
[North American Review, vol. cxii., 1871. ] 
VI. ALForn’s QUEEN’s ENGLISH 3 d ; : i . 166 
[North American Review, vol. ciii., 1866.] 
VII. How sHatt we SPELL? ; 181 
[The Nation (New York), Nos. 95, 96, fy 101, for pe 25, 
May 2, and June 6, 1867.] é 
VIII. Tue Evements oF ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION . ; . 202 
See Preface. 
IX. Tue Revation or Vowrt anp Consonant. 277 
[Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. viii., 1865, ae 
see Preface. ] 
X. Bety’s VisiBpLE SPEECH $ 4 d . ; . 301 
[North American Review, vol. cvii., 1868, J 
XI. On THE ACCENT IN SANSKRIT. - ; . ° . 318 
See Preface. 
XII. On tHe Lunar Zoprac oF Inpia, Perey AND CHINA 341 


See Preface. 


‘eincd = 


a 


de eae we ak Se 


eee 
a ts 


+ 


ian Atta, RE ba cal ona tie a fae pein: eee 4 


— os sgAPAoo 


